| Introduction All the idols of capitalism over the past three decades crashed. The assumptions and presumptions, paradigm and prognosis of indefinite progress under liberal free market capitalism have been tested and have failed. We are living the end of an entire epoch: Experts everywhere witness the collapse of the US and world financial system, the absence of credit for trade and the lack of financing for investment. A world depression, in which upward of a quarter of the world's labor force will be unemployed, is looming. The biggest decline in trade in recent world history – down 40% year to year – defines the future. The immanent bankruptcies of the biggest manufacturing companies in the capitalist world haunt Western political leaders. The 'market' as a mechanism for allocating resources and the government of the US as the 'leader' of the global economy have been discredited. (Financial Times, March 9, 2009) All the assumptions about 'self-stabilizing markets' are demonstrably false and outmoded. The rejection of public intervention in the market and the advocacy of supply-side economics have been discredited even in the eyes of their practitioners. Even official circles recognize that 'inequality of income' contributed to the onset of the economic crash and should be corrected. Planning, public ownership, nationalization are on the agenda while socialist alternatives have become almost respectable. With the onset of the depression, all the shibboleths of the past decade are discarded: As export-oriented growth strategies fail, import substitution policies emerge. As the world economy 'de-globalizes' and capital is 'repatriated' to save near bankrupt head offices – national ownership is proposed. As trillions of dollars/Euros/yen in assets are destroyed and devalued, massive layoffs extend unemployment everywhere. Fear, anxiety and uncertainty stalk the offices of state, financial directorships, the office suites the factories, and the streets… We enter a time of upheaval, when the foundations of the world political and economic order are deeply fractured, to the point that no one can imagine any restoration of the political-economic order of the recent past. The future promises economic chaos, political upheavals and mass impoverishment. Once again, the specter of socialism hovers over the ruins of the former giants of finance. As free market capital collapses, its ideological advocates jump ship, abandon their line and verse of the virtues of the market and sing a new chorus: the State as Savior of the System - a dubious proposition, whose only outcome will be to prolong the pillage of the public treasury and postpone the death agony of capitalism as we have known it. Theory of Capital Crisis: The Demise of the Economic Expert The failed economic policies of political and economic leaders are rooted in the operation of markets – capitalism. To avoid a critique of the capitalist system, writers are blaming the leaders and financial experts for their incompetence, 'greed' and individual defects. Psychobabble has replaced reasoned analysis of structures, material forces and objective reality, which drive, motivate and provide incentives to investors, policy makers and bankers. When capitalist economies collapse, the gods drive the politicians and editorial columnists crazy, depriving them of any capacity to reason about objective processes and sending them into the wilderness of subjective speculation. Instead of examining the opportunity structures created by enormous surplus capital and the real existing profit margins, which in drive capitalists into financial activity, we are told it was 'the failure of leadership'. Instead of examining the power and influence of the capitalist class over the state, in particular the selection of economic policy-makers and regulators who would maximize their profits, we are told there was a 'lack of understanding' or 'willful ignorance of what markets need'. Instead of looking at the real social classes and class relations – specifically the historically existing capitalist classes operating in real existing markets - the psycho-babblers posit an abstract 'market' populated by imaginary ('rational') capitalists. Instead of examining how rising profits, expanding markets, cheap credit, docile labor, and control over state policies and budgets, create 'investor confidence', and, in their absence, destroy 'confidence', the psychobabblers claim that the 'loss of confidence' is a cause for the economic debacle. The objective problem of loss of specific conditions, which produce profits, as leading to the crisis, is turned into a 'perception' of this loss. Confidence, faith, hope, trust in capitalist economies derive from economic relations and structures which produce profits. These psychological states are derivative from successful outcomes: Economic transactions, investments and market shares that raise value, multiply present and future gains. When investments go sour, firms lose money, enterprises go bankrupt, and those prejudiced 'lose confidence' in the owners and brokers. When entire economic sectors severely prejudice the entire class of investors, depositors and borrowers, there is a loss of 'systemic confidence.' Psychobabble is the last resort of capitalist ideologues, academics, experts and financial page editorialists. Unwilling to face the breakdown of real existing capitalist markets, they write and resort to vague utopias such as 'proper markets' distorted by 'certain mindsets'. In other words, to save their failed ideology based on capitalist markets, they invent a moral ideal the 'proper capitalist mind and market', divorced from real behavior, economic imperatives and contradictions embedded in class warfare. The inadequate and shoddy economic arguments, which pervade the writing of capitalist ideologues parallels the bankruptcy of the social system in which they are embedded. The intellectual and moral failures of the capitalist class and their political followers are not personal defects; they reflect the economic failure of the capitalist market. The crash of the US financial system is symptomatic of a deeper and more profound collapse of the capitalist system that has its roots in the dynamic development of capitalism in the previous three decades. In its broadest terms, the current world depression results from the classic formulation outlined by Karl Marx over 150 years ago: the contradiction between the development of the forces and relations of production. Contrary to the theorists who argue that 'finance' and 'post-industrial' capitalism have 'destroyed' or de-industrialized the world economy and put in its place a kind of "casino" or speculative capital, in fact, we have witnessed the most spectacular long-term growth of industrial capital employing more industrial and salaried workers than ever in history. Driven by rising rates of profit, large scale and long-term investments have been the motor force for the penetration by industrial and related capital of the most remote underdeveloped regions of the world. New and old capitalist countries spawned enormous economic empires, breaking down political and cultural barriers to incorporating and exploiting billions of new and old workers in a relentless process. As competition from the newly industrialized countries intensified, and as the rising mass of profits exceeded the capacity to reinvest them most profitably in the older capitalist centers, masses of capital migrated to Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and to a lesser degree, into the Middle East, Southern Africa. Huge surplus profits spilled over into services, including finance, real estate, insurance, large-scale real estate and urban lands. The dynamic growth of capitalism's technological innovations found expression in greater social and political power – dwarfing the organization of labor, limiting its bargaining power and multiplying its profits. With the growth of world markets, workers were seen merely as 'costs of production' not as final consumers. Wages stagnated; social benefits were limited, curtailed or shifted onto workers. Under conditions of dynamic capitalist growth, the state and state policy became their absolute instrument: restrictions, controls, regulation were weakened. What was dubbed "neo-liberalism" opened new areas for investment of surplus profits: public enterprises, land, resources and banks were privatized. As competition intensified, as new industrial powers emerged in Asia, US capital increasingly invested in financial activity. Within the financial circuits it elaborated a whole series of financial instruments, which drew on the growing wealth and profits from the productive sectors. US capital did not 'de-industrialize' – it relocated to China, Korea and other centers of growth, not because of "falling profits" but because of surplus profits and greater profits overseas. Capital's opening in China provided hundreds of millions of workers with jobs subject to the most brutal exploitation at subsistence wages, no social benefits, little or no organized social power. A new class of Asian capitalist collaborators, nurtured and facilitated by Asian state capitalism, increased the enormous volume of profits. Rates of investments reached dizzying proportions, given the vast inequalities between income/property owning class and wageworkers. Huge surpluses accrued but internal demand was sharply constrained. Exports, export growth and overseas consumers became the driving force of the Asian economies. US and European manufacturers invested in Asia to export back to their home markets – shifting the structure of internal capital toward commerce and finance. Diminished wages paid to the workers led to a vast expansion in credit. Financial activity grew in proportion to the entrance of commodities from the dynamic, newly industrialized countries. Industrial profits were re-invested in financial services. Profits and liquidity grew in proportion to the relative decline in real value generated by the shift from industrial to financial/commercial capital. Super profits from world production, trade, finances and the recycling of overseas earnings back to the US through both state and private financial circuits created enormous liquidity. It was far beyond the historical capacity of the US and European economies to absorb such profits in productive sectors. The dynamic and voracious exploitation of the huge surplus labor forces in China, India, and elsewhere and the absolute pillage and transfer of hundreds of billions from ex-communist Russia and 'neo-liberalized' Latin America filled the coffers of new and old financial institutions. Over-exploitation of labor in Asia, and the over-accumulation of financial liquidity in the US led to the magnification of the paper economy and what liberal economist later called "global disequilibrium" between savers/industrial investors/ exporters (in Asia) and consumers/financiers/importers(in the US). Huge trade surpluses in the East were papered over by the purchase of US T-notes. The US economy was precariously backed by an increasingly inflated paper economy. The expansion of the financial sector resulted from the high rates of return, taking advantage of the 'liberalized' economy imposed by the power of diversified investment capital in previous decades. The internationalization of capital, its dynamic growth and the enormous growth of trade outran the stagnant wages, declining social payments, the huge surplus labor force. Temporarily, capital sought to bolster its profits via inflated real estate based on expanded credit, highly leveraged debt and outright massive fraudulent 'financial instruments' (invisible assets without value). The collapse of the paper economy exposed the overdeveloped financial system and forced its demise. The loss of finance, credit and markets, reverberated to all the export-oriented industrial manufacturing powers. The lack of social consumption, the weakness of the internal market and the huge inequalities denied the industrial countries any compensatory markets to stabilize or limit their fall into recession and depression. The dynamic growth of the productive forces based on the over-exploitation of labor, led to the overdevelopment of the financial circuits, which set in motion the process of 'feeding off' industry and subordinating and undermining the accumulation process to highly speculative capital. Cheap labor, the source of profits, investment, trade and export growth on a world scale, could no longer sustain both the pillage by finance capital and provide a market for the dynamic industrial sector. What was erroneously dubbed a financial crisis or even more narrowly a "mortgage" or housing crisis, was merely the "trigger" for the collapse of the overdeveloped financial sector. The financial sector, which grew out of the dynamic expansion of 'productive' capitalism, later 'rebounded' against it. The historic links and global ties between industry and financial capital led inevitably to a systemic capitalist crisis, embedded in the contradiction between impoverished labor and concentrated capital. The current world depression is a product of the 'over-accumulation' process of the capitalist system in which the crash of the financial system was the 'detonator' but not the structural determinant. This is demonstrated by the fact that industrial Japan and Germany experienced a bigger fall in exports, investments and growth than 'financial' US and England. The capitalist system in crisis destroys capital in order to 'purge itself' of the least efficient, least competitive and most indebted enterprises and sectors, in order to re-concentrate capital and reconstruct the powers of accumulation – political conditions permitting. The re-composition of capital grows out of the pillage of state resources – so-called bailouts and other massive transfers from the public treasury (read 'taxpayers'), which results from the savage reduction of social transfers (read 'public services') and the cheapening of labor through firings, massive unemployment, wage, pension and health reductions and the general reduction of living standards in order to increase the rate of profit. The World Depression: Class Analysis The aggregate economic indicators of the rise and fall of the world capitalist system are of limited value in understanding the causes, trajectory and impact of the world depression. At best, they describe the economic carnage; at worst, they obfuscate the leading (ruling) social classes, with their complex networks and transformations, which directed the expansion and economic collapse and the wage and salaried (working) classes, which produced the wealth to fuel the expansive phase and now pay the cost of the economic collapse. It is a well-known truism that those who caused the crisis are also the greatest beneficiaries of government largesse. The crude and simple everyday observations that the ruling class 'made' the crisis and the working class 'pays' the cost, at a minimum, is a recognition of the utility of class analyses in deciphering the social reality behind the aggregate economic data. Following the recession of the early 1970s, the Western industrial capitalist class secured financing to launch a period of extensive and deep growth covering the entire globe. German, Japanese and Southeast Asian capitalists flourished, competed and collaborated with their US counterpart. Throughout this period the social power, organization and political influence of the working class witnessed a relative and absolute decline in their share of material income. Technological innovations, including the re-organization of work, compensated for wage increases by reducing the 'mass of workers' and in, particular, their capacity to pressure the prerogatives of management. The capitalist strategic position in production was strengthened: they were able to exercise near absolute control over the location and movements of capital. The established capitalist powers – especially in England and the US -- with large accumulations of capital and facing increasing competition from the fully recovered German and Japanese capitalists, sought to expand their rates of return by moving capital investments into finance and services. At first, this move was linked and directed towards promoting the sale of their manufactured products by providing credit and financing toward the purchases of automobiles or 'white goods'. Less dynamic industrial capitalists relocated their assembly plants to low-wage regions and countries. The results were that industrial capitalists took on more the appearance of 'financiers' in the US even as they retained their industrial character in the operation of their overseas manufacturing subsidiaries and satellite suppliers. Both overseas manufacturing and local financial returns swelled the aggregate profits of the capitalist class. While capital accumulation expanded in the 'home country', domestic wages and social costs were under pressure as capitalists imposed the costs of competition on the backs of wage earners via the collaboration of the trade unions in the US and social democratic political parties in Europe. Wage constraints, tying wages to productivity in an asymmetrical way and labor-capital pacts increased profits. US workers were 'compensated' by the cheap consumer imports produced by the low-wage labor force in the newly industrializing countries and access to easy credit at home. The Western pillage of the former-USSR, with the collaboration of gangster-oligarchs, led to the massive flow of looted capital into Western banks throughout the 1990s. The Chinese transition to capitalism in the 1980s, which accelerated in the 1990s, expanded the accumulation of industrial profits via the intensive exploitation of tens of millions of wageworkers employed at subsistence levels. While the trillion-dollar pillage of Russia and the entire former Soviet Union bloated the West European and US financial sector, the massive growth of billions of dollars in illegal transfers and money laundering toward US and UK banks added to the overdevelopment of the financial sector. The rise in oil prices and 'rents' among 'rentier' capitalists added a vast new source of financial profits and liquidity. Pillage, rents, and contraband capital provided a vast accumulation of financial wealth disconnected from industrial production. On the other hand, the rapid industrialization of China and other Asian countries provided a vast market for German and Japanese high-end manufacturers: they supplied the high quality machines and technology to the Chinese and Vietnamese factories. US capitalists did not 'de-industrialize' – the country did. By relocating production overseas and importing finished products and focusing on credit and financing, the US capitalist class and its members became diversified and multi-sectoral. They multiplied their profits and intensified the accumulation of capital. On the other hand, workers were subject to multiple forms of exploitation: wages stagnated, creditors squeezed interest, and the conversion from high wage/high skill manufacturing jobs to lower-paid service jobs steadily reduced living standards. The basic process leading up to the breakdown was clearly present: the dynamic growth of western capitalist wealth was based, in part, on the brutal pillage of the USSR and Latin America, which profoundly lowered living standards throughout the 1990s. The intensified and savage exploitation of hundreds of millions of low-paid Chinese, Mexican, Indonesian and Indochinese workers, and the forced exodus of former peasants as migrant laborers to manufacturing centers led to high rates of accumulation. The relative decline of wages in the US and Western Europe also added to the accumulation of capital. The German, Chinese, Japanese, Latin American and Eastern European emphasis on export-driven growth added to the mounting 'imbalance' or contradiction between concentrated capitalist wealth and ownership and the growing mass of low-paid workers. Inequalities on a world scale grew geometrically. The dynamic accumulation process exceeded the capacity of the highly polarized capitalist system to absorb capital in productive activity at existing high rates of profit. This led to the large scale and multiform growth of speculator capital inflating prices and investing in real estate, commodities, hedge funds, securities, debt-financing, mergers and acquisitions -- all divorced from real value-producing activity. The industrial boom and the class constraints imposed on workers wages undermined domestic demand and intensified competition in world markets. Speculator-financial activity with massive liquidity offered a 'short-term solution': profits based on debt financing. Competition among lenders fueled the availability of cheap credit. Real estate speculation was extended into the working class, as wage and salaried workers, without personal savings or assets, took advantage of their access to easy loans to join the speculator-induced frenzy - based on an ideology of irreversible rising home values. The inevitable collapse reverberated throughout the system – detonated at the bottom of the speculative chain. From the latest entrants to the real estate sub-prime mortgage holders, the crisis moved up the ladder affecting the biggest banks and corporations, who engaged in leveraged buyouts and acquisitions. All 'sectors', which had 'diversified' from manufacturing to finance, trade and commodities speculation, were downgraded. The entire panoply of capitalists faced bankruptcy. German, Japanese and Chinese industrial exporters who exploited labor witnessed the collapse of their export markets. The 'bursting' financial bubble was the product of the 'over-accumulation' of industrial capital and the pillage of wealth on a world scale. Over-accumulation is rooted in the most fundamental capitalist relation: the contradictions between private ownership and social production, the simultaneous concentration of capital and sharp decline of living standards. Obama and the Capitalist Crisis: A Class Analysis Indicators of the deepening depression in 2009 are found everywhere: Bankruptcies rose by 14% in 2008 and are set to rise another 20% in 2009 (Financial Times, Feb. 25, 2009; p27). The write-down of the Western big banks is running at 1 Trillion dollars and growing (according to the Institute for International Financing, the banking groups Washington lobby). (Financial Times , March 10, 2009 p.9). And according to the Financial Times (ibid) the losses arising from banks having to mark their investments down to market prices stand at 3 Trillion dollars – equivalent to a year's worth of British economic production. In the same report, the Asian Development Bank is quoted as having estimated that financial assets worldwide havefallen by more than $50 trillion – a figure of the same order as annual global output. For 2009, the US will run a budget deficit of 12.3% of gross domestic product…giant fiscal deficits…that will ultimately ruin public finances. The world markets have been in a vertical fall:
With over 600,000 workers losing their jobs monthly in the first three months of 2009, and many more on short hours and scheduled for axing throughout 2009, real and disguised unemployment may reach 25% by the end of the year. All of the signs point to a deep and prolonged depression:
The rising tide of depression is driven by private business led disinvestment. Rising business inventories, declining investment, bankruptcies, foreclosures, insolvent banks, massive accumulative losses, restricted access to credit, falling asset values and a 20% reduction in household wealth (over 3 trillion dollars) are cause and consequence of the depression. As a result of collapse of the industrial, mining, real estate and trade sectors, there are at least $2.2 trillion USD of "toxic" (defaulting) bank debt worldwide, far beyond the bailout funds allocated by the White House in October 2008 and February and March 2009. The depression is diminishing the worldwide economic presence of imperial countries and undermining the foreign capital-financed export strategies of Latin American, Eastern European, Asian and African regions. Among almost all conventional economists, pundits, investment advisors and various and sundry experts and economic historians, there is a common faith that "in the long-run", the stock market will recover, the recession will end and the government will withdraw from the economy. Fixed on notions of past cyclical patterns, historical 'trends', these analysts lose sight of the present realities which have no precedent: the world nature of the economic depression, the unprecedented speed of the fall, and the levels of debt incurred by governments to sustain insolvent banks and industries and the unprecedented public deficits, which will drain resources for many generations to come. The academic prophets of 'long-term developments" arbitrarily select trend markers from the past, which were established on the basis of a political-economic context radically different from today. The idle chatter of 'post crisis' economists overlooks the open-ended and constantly shifting parameters therefore missing the true 'trend markers' of the current depression. As one analyst noted, "any starting conditions we select in the historical data cannot replicate the starting conditions at any other moment because the preceding events in the two cases are never identical" (Financial Times, Feb. 26, 2009; p24). The current US depression takes place in the context of a de-industrialized economy, an insolvent financial system, record fiscal deficits, record trade deficits, unprecedented public debt, multi-trillion dollar foreign debt and well over $800 billion dollars committed in military expenditures for several ongoing wars and occupations. All of these variables defy the contexts in which previous depressions occurred. Nothing in previous contexts leading up to a crisis of capitalism resembles the present situation. The present configuration of economic, political and social structures of capitalism include astronomical levels of state pillage of the public treasury in order to prop up insolvent banks and factories, involving unprecedented transfers of income from wage and salaried taxpayers to non-productive 'rent earners' and to failed industrial capitalists, dividend collectors and creditors. The rate and levels of appropriation and reduction of savings, pensions and health plans, all without any compensation, has led to the most rapid and widespread reduction of living standards and mass impoverishment in recent US history. Never in the history of capitalism has a deep economic crisis occurred without any alternative socialist movement, party or state present to pose an alternative. Never have states and regimes been under such absolute control by the capitalist class -- especially in the allocation of public resources. Never in the history of an economic depression has so much of government expenditures been so one-sidedly directed towards compensating a failed capitalist class with so little going to wage and salaried workers. The Obama regime's economic appointments and policies clearly reflect the total control by the capitalist class over state expenditures and economic planning. Obama and the Capitalist Crisis: A Class Analysis The programs put forth by the US and West Europeans and other capitalist regions do not even begin to recognize the structural bases of the depression. First, Obama is allocating $1 trillion dollars to buy worthless bank assets and over 40% of his $787 billion stimulus package to insolvent banks and tax breaks, rather than to the productive sector, in order to save stock and bond holders, while over 600,000 workers lose their jobs monthly. Secondly, the Obama regime is channeling over $800 billion dollars to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to sustain military-driven empire building. This constitutes a massive transfer of public funds from the civilian economy to the military sector forcing tens of thousands of unemployed young people to enlist in the military (Boston Globe, March 1, 2009). Thirdly, Obama's commission to oversee the "restructuring" of the US auto industry has backed their plans to close scores of factories, eliminate company-financed health plans for retirees and force tens of thousands of workers to accept brutal reductions in employee health care and pensions. The entire burden for returning the privately owned auto industry to profits is placed on the shoulders of the wage, salaried and retired workers, and the US taxpayers. The entire economic strategy of the Obama regime is to save the bondholders by pouring endless trillions of dollars into insolvent corporations and buying the worthless debts and failed assets of financial enterprises. At the same time his regime avoids any direct state investments in publicly owned productive enterprises, which would provide employment for the 10 million unemployed workers. While Obama's budget allocates over 40% to military expenditures and debt payments, 1 out of every 10 Americans have been evicted from their homes, the number of Americans without jobs is rising to double digits, and the number of Americans on 'food stamps' to provide basic food needs is rising by the millions throughout 2009. Obama's 'job creation' scheme channels billions toward the privately owned telecommunication, construction, environmental and energy corporations, where the bulk of the government funds go to senior management and staff and provide profits to stock holders, while a lesser part will go to wage workers. Moreover, the bulk of the unemployed workers in the manufacturing and service areas are not remotely employable in the 'recipient' sectors. Only a fraction of the 'stimulus package' will be allocated in 2009. Its purpose and impact will be to sustain the income of the financial and industrial ruling class and to postpone their long-overdue demise. Its effect will be to heighten the socioeconomic inequalities between the ruling class and the wage and salaried workers. The tax increases on the rich are incremental, while the massive debts resulting from the fiscal deficits are imposed on present and future wage and salaried taxpayers. Obama's wholehearted embrace and promotion of military-driven empire building even in the midst of record-breaking budget deficits, huge trade deficits and an advancing depression defines a militarist without peer in modern history. Despite promises to the contrary, the military budget for 2009-2010 exceeds the Bush Administration by at least 4%. The numbers of US military forces will increase by several hundred thousands. The number of US troops in Iraq will remain close to its peak and increase by tens of thousands in Afghanistan, at least through 2009 (despite promises to the contrary). US-based miliary air and ground attacks in Pakistan have multiplied geometrically. Obama's top foreign policy appointees in the State Department, Pentagon, Treasury and the National Security Council, especially in any capacity involving the Middle East, are predominantly militarist Zionists with a long history of advocacy of war against Iran and with close ties with the Israeli high command. In summary, the highest priorities of the Obama regime are evidenced by his allocation of financial and material resources, his appointments of top economic and foreign policy-makers and in terms of which classes benefit and which lose under his administration. Obama's policies demonstrate that his regime is totally committed to saving the capitalist class and the US empire. To do so, he is willing to sacrifice the most basic immediate needs and future interests, as well as the living standards, of the vast majority of working and home-owning Americans who are most directly affected by the domestic economic depression. Obama has increased the scope of military-driven empire building and enhanced the power position of the pro-Israeli warmongers in his administration. Obama's 'economic recovery' and military escalation strategies are financially and fiscally incompatible; the cost of one undermines the impact of the other and leaves a tremendous hole in any efforts to counteract the collapse of social services, rising home foreclosures, business bankruptcies and massive layoffs. The horizontal transfers of public wealth from the Obama governing elite to the economic ruling class does not "trickle down" into jobs, credit and social services. Attempting to turn insolvent banks into credit-lending, profitable enterprises is an oxymoron. The central dilemma for Obama is how to create conditions to restore profitability to the failed sectors of the existing US economy. There are several fundamental problems with his strategy: First, the US economic structure, which once generated employment, profits and growth, no longer exists. It has been dismantled in the course of diverting capital overseas and into financial instruments and other non-productive economic sectors. Secondly, the Obama 'stimulus' policies reinforce the financial stranglehold over the economy by channeling great resources to that sector instead of 'rebalancing' the economy toward the productive sector. Even within the 'productive sector' state resources are directed toward subsiding capitalist elites who have demonstrated their incapacity to generate sustained employment, foster market competitiveness and innovate in line with consumer preferences and interests. Thirdly, the Obama economic strategy of 'top-down' recovery squanders most of its impact in subsidizing failed capitalists instead of raising working class income by doubling the minimum wage and unemployment benefits, which is the only real basis for increasing demand and stimulating economic recovery. Given the declining living standards resulting from domestic decay and the expansion of military-driven empire, both embedded in the institutional foundation of the state, there are no chances for the kind of structural transformation that can reverse the 'top-down', empire-absorbing policies promoted by the Obama regime. Recovery from the deepening depression does not reside in running a multi-trillion dollar printing operation, which only creates conditions for hyperinflation and the debasement of the dollar. The root cause is the over-accumulation of capital resulting from over-exploitation of labor, leading to rising rates of profit and the collapse of demand. The vast disparity between capital expansion and decline of worker consumption set the stage for the financial bubble. The 'rebalancing' of the economy means creating demand (not from an utterly prostrate private productive sector or an insolvent financial system) via direct state ownership and long-term, large-scale investment in the production of goods and social services. The entire speculative 'superstructure', which grew to enormous proportions by feeding off of the value created by labor, multiplied itself in a myriad of 'paper instruments' divorced from any use value. The entire paper economy needs to be dismantled in order to free the productive forces from the shackles and constraints of unproductive capitalists and their entourage. A vast re-training program needs to be established to convert stockbrokers into engineers and productive workers. The reconstruction of the domestic market and the invention and the application of innovations to raise productivity require the massive dismantling of the worldwide empire. Costly and unproductive military bases, the essential elements for military-driven empire building, should be closed and replaced by overseas trade networks, markets, and economic transactions linked to producers operating out of their home markets. Reversing domestic decay requires the end of empire and the construction of a democratic socialist republic. Fundamental to the dismantling of empire is the end of political alliances with overseas militarist powers, in particular with the state of Israel and uprooting its entire domestic power configuration, which undermine efforts to create an open democratic society serving the interests of the American people. | |
| James Petras is a frequent contributor to Global Research. | |
NADEEM MALIK
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
World Depression: Regional Wars and the Decline of the US Empire Part I by Prof. James Petras
Regions with constitutional drawbacks
| Regions with constitutional drawbacks | |
| Part I Tuesday, March 24, 2009 Dr Tariq Hassan While the legal community is pleased that the lawyers' movement has culminated in getting the judiciary fully restored, it is conscious of the fact that the journey for much needed judicial reforms in the country has just begun. But for now, the legal community's attention needs to be diverted to the more pressing issues raised by the civil strife brewing in the tribal and northern regions of Pakistan. The troubled tribal areas and northern regions of Pakistan are what I call the constitutionally disadvantaged areas. These areas are fast sinking into a state of anarchy with the continuing deterioration of the law and order situation there. While the government seeks to re-establish its writ through the strategic use of force, the civil society considers increased economic aid as a possible means of establishing peace in these areas. Both these are short-term superficial solutions. What is needed is a preliminary diagnosis of the underlying issues in order to find a durable long-term prescription for the problem. The starting point should be a constitutional analysis of the status of these areas. 1. The tribal areas The tribal areas, where the "great game" was played out amongst the imperial powers in the nineteenth century, are mostly situated in the north-western part of Pakistan. These areas enjoyed the status of "tribal areas" at the time of the independence of Pakistan from colonial rule in 1947. After independence, various tribal areas acceded to Pakistan through instruments of accession executed by them in favour of Pakistan. While acceding, however, these areas sought to retain their political autonomy. The instruments of accession granted the administration of the tribal areas to Pakistan but allowed these areas to retain their semi-autonomous status for the management of their other affairs. There is no reference to the instruments of accession in the Constitution but the Peshawar High Court has deemed the obligations thereunder to have been "merged into the jurisprudential fabric of the polity of Pakistan" (1990 CLC 560). Pakistan is a Federal Republic whose territories include the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and such states and territories as are or may be included in Pakistan, whether by accession or otherwise. In addition to FATA, the tribal areas include the Provincially Administered Tribal Areas (PATA) of Balochistan and the North-West Frontier Province. While the tribal areas are an integral part of Pakistan, they retain their confederate status partly because of historical reasons and partly because of Pakistan's lack of vision and its failure to integrate them fully in its federal structure. These areas remain administered territories and are likely to remain so perpetually because the Constitution does not grant them the same rights and privileges as the four provinces, even though it does, in certain respects, protect the interests of FATA at par with the interests of the provinces and the Federal Capital Territory. The Constitution does not envisage the graduation of FATA to a full federating unit of the country through a gradual process of integration. Pakistan, having inherited the colonial legacy, continues its paternalistic rule over these territories through executive fiat.
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Donors Should Link Aid to Governance Reforms
Donors Should Link Aid to Governance Reforms
By Abid Hasan
Former Operations Advisor, World Bank
Foreign Aid in different times and in different places has been highly effective, totally ineffective and everything in between. It has been a spectacular success in a few countries, mostly in
First, and the most important lesson, aid has only been effective in an environment where there is Good Governance, Effective and Accountable Public Institutions, and Good Policies. Failures in policy making and institution building, and poor governance, are more severe constraints to development, than lack of aid.
Second, it is unambiguously clear that "Money alone can neither buy sustained Development nor sustained Stability". The abysmal development outcomes in Sub-Sahara Africa and most of
During this period, the experience of major multilateral donors –World Bank, IMF and Asian Bank-- was also equally unsatisfactory. Between them, they provided almost $10 billion of project and fast disbursing loans. And for the most part this lending had limited, if any, impact on improving either the lives of ordinary folks or their access to education, health, justice or economic opportunities. The World Bank's own evaluation rated the impact of Bank's assistance program, during this period, as Unsatisfactory.
Good governance environment is especially important for success of budget support and balance of payment loans. In the last decade donors provided close to $ 8-10 billion of such support. Clearly this type of assistance enabled
For the sake
Donors must require a credible Good Governance strategy and implementation plans , comprising at least, the following : rescinding aspects of NRO relating to the corrupt , and establishment of an Independent Anti-Corruption Commission which has jurisdiction over all branches of government, legislature and the judiciary; independent audit of tax returns of all elected legislators, and government and judicial officials above a certain rank, to ensure that declared personal income matches the life style of these officials; strengthening accountability and incentives to improve performance of institutions providing services to the poor; making the Election Commission independent and powerful; and restoring the moral authority , integrity and professional quality of judiciary by re-appointing all judges through the COD prescribed mechanism.
All the above actions will strengthen
External pressure for good governance would be welcomed by civil society and the poor who are clamoring for fundamental governance reforms, but are weak in relation to vested interests benefiting from bad governance. Donor pressure can be instrumental in a country which is so dependent on external assistance. Civil society would get emboldend if donors openly espoused what is "Right", and not be shy to speak up and 'walk the talk'. Donors should not worry too much from the backlash of the interest groups who are likely to lose. Donors must recognize that as long as bad governance continues, winning the war on terror will be an uphill task and ordinary folks will ultimately get disenchanted with the status quo ( as happened in Swat) and support radicalism and violent means for change. Therefore, except for humanitarian aid and targeted pro-poor assistance through non-government agencies , all other aid should be linked to implementation of credible governance improvement reforms, starting with the actions noted above.
Pouring money into dysfunctional government institutions, in a poor governance setting, will neither guarantee development nor stability. Nor will it reduce the frustrations and temptations that lead young people to choose the path of confrontation and opt for groups that preach hate and terror. Wasteful aid hurts the country's reputation, but worse preserves an elitist system –government of the elite, for the elite and by the elite-- and sham democracy which will crash every few years.
Donors must realize that 'doing the right thing' must take precedence over expediency, that promoting Good Governance will also promote democracy and sustainable pro-poor growth. Donors should be part of the solution and not become a main contributor to the problem. For
Abid Hasan, Former Operations Advisor, World Bank
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N A D E E M M A L I K
Director Programme
AAJ TV
ISLAMABAD
00-92-321-5117511
nadeem.malik@hotmail.com
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Monday, March 30, 2009
Obama's 'New' Afghanistan Strategy
Obama's 'New' Afghanistan Strategy
Monday, March 30, 2009 
By Sean Hannity
A quick trip around Hannity's America...
"New" Afghan Plan?
Friday, with his national security team by his side, President Obama unveiled what he called a new strategy for fighting the war in Afghanistan. But, he ended up sounding a lot like somebody else I know.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FORMER PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Protecting America from another attack is the most important responsibility of the federal government, the most solemn obligation that a president undertakes.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: As president, my greatest responsibility is to protect the American people.
BUSH: This is not, however, just America's fight and what is at stake is not just America's freedom. This is the world's fight.
OBAMA: This is not simply an American problem, far from it. The safety of people around the world is at stake.
BUSH: Our offensive against the terrorists includes far more than military might.
OBAMA: A campaign against extremism will not succeed with bullets or bombs alone.
BUSH: Afghanistan's success is critical to the security of America and our partners in the free world.
OBAMA: And what's at stake at this time is not just our own security, it's the very idea that free nations can come together on behalf of our common security.
BUSH: There will be difficult moments in the work ahead. Yet, we can be confident in the outcome.
OBAMA: So I understand the road ahead will be long and there will be difficult days ahead.
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N A D E E M M A L I K
Director Programme
AAJ TV
ISLAMABAD
00-92-321-5117511
nadeem.malik@hotmail.com
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Friday, March 27, 2009
US President Obama’s Remarks on New Strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan
President Obama's Remarks on New Strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan
March 27, 2009
Good morning. Today, I am announcing a comprehensive, new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
This marks the conclusion of a careful policy review that I ordered as soon as I took office. My Administration has heard from our military commanders and diplomats. We have consulted with the Afghan and Pakistani governments; with our partners and NATO allies; and with other donors and international organizations. And we have also worked closely with members of Congress here at home. Now, I'd like to speak clearly and candidly to the American people.
The situation is increasingly perilous. It has been more than seven years since the Taliban was removed from power, yet war rages on, and insurgents control parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Attacks against our troops, our NATO allies, and the Afghan government have risen steadily. Most painfully, 2008 was the deadliest year of the war for American forces.
Many people in the United States – and many in partner countries that have sacrificed so much – have a simple question: What is our purpose in Afghanistan? After so many years, they ask, why do our men and women still fight and die there? They deserve a straightforward answer.
So let me be clear: al Qaeda and its allies – the terrorists who planned and supported the 9/11 attacks – are in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Multiple intelligence estimates have warned that al Qaeda is actively planning attacks on the U.S. homeland from its safe-haven in Pakistan. And if the Afghan government falls to the Taliban – or allows al Qaeda to go unchallenged – that country will again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can.
The future of Afghanistan is inextricably linked to the future of its neighbor, Pakistan. In the nearly eight years since 9/11, al Qaeda and its extremist allies have moved across the border to the remote areas of the Pakistani frontier. This almost certainly includes al Qaeda's leadership: Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. They have used this mountainous terrain as a safe-haven to hide, train terrorists, communicate with followers, plot attacks, and send fighters to support the insurgency in Afghanistan. For the American people, this border region has become the most dangerous place in the world.
But this is not simply an American problem – far from it. It is, instead, an international security challenge of the highest order. Terrorist attacks in London and Bali were tied to al Qaeda and its allies in Pakistan, as were attacks in North Africa and the Middle East, in Islamabad and Kabul. If there is a major attack on an Asian, European, or African city, it – too – is likely to have ties to al Qaeda's leadership in Pakistan. The safety of people around the world is at stake.
For the Afghan people, a return to Taliban rule would condemn their country to brutal governance, international isolation, a paralyzed economy, and the denial of basic human rights to the Afghan people – especially women and girls. The return in force of al Qaeda terrorists who would accompany the core Taliban leadership would cast Afghanistan under the shadow of perpetual violence.
As President, my greatest responsibility is to protect the American people. We are not in Afghanistan to control that country or to dictate its future. We are in Afghanistan to confront a common enemy that threatens the United States, our friends and allies, and the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan who have suffered the most at the hands of violent extremists.
So I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future. That is the goal that must be achieved. That is a cause that could not be more just. And to the terrorists who oppose us, my message is the same: we will defeat you.
To achieve our goals, we need a stronger, smarter and comprehensive strategy. To focus on the greatest threat to our people, America must no longer deny resources to Afghanistan because of the war in Iraq. To enhance the military, governance, and economic capacity of Afghanistan and Pakistan, we have to marshal international support. And to defeat an enemy that heeds no borders or laws of war, we must recognize the fundamental connection between the future of Afghanistan and Pakistan – which is why I've appointed Ambassador Richard Holbrooke to serve as Special Representative for both countries, and to work closely with General David Petraeus to integrate our civilian and military efforts.
Let me start by addressing the way forward in Pakistan.
The United States has great respect for the Pakistani people. They have a rich history, and have struggled against long odds to sustain their democracy. The people of Pakistan want the same things that we want: an end to terror, access to basic services, the opportunity to live their dreams, and the security that can only come with the rule of law. The single greatest threat to that future comes from al Qaeda and their extremist allies, and that is why we must stand together.
The terrorists within Pakistan's borders are not simply enemies of America or Afghanistan – they are a grave and urgent danger to the people of Pakistan. Al Qaeda and other violent extremists have killed several thousand Pakistanis since 9/11. They have killed many Pakistani soldiers and police. They assassinated Benazir Bhutto. They have blown up buildings, derailed foreign investment, and threatened the stability of the state. Make no mistake: al Qaeda and its extremist allies are a cancer that risks killing Pakistan from within.
It is important for the American people to understand that Pakistan needs our help in going after al Qaeda. This is no simple task. The tribal regions are vast, rugged, and often ungoverned. That is why we must focus our military assistance on the tools, training and support that Pakistan needs to root out the terrorists. And after years of mixed results, we will not provide a blank check. Pakistan must demonstrate its commitment to rooting out al Qaeda and the violent extremists within its borders. And we will insist that action be taken – one way or another – when we have intelligence about high-level terrorist targets.
The government's ability to destroy these safe-havens is tied to its own strength and security. To help Pakistan weather the economic crisis, we must continue to work with the IMF, the World Bank and other international partners. To lessen tensions between two nuclear-armed nations that too often teeter on the edge of escalation and confrontation, we must pursue constructive diplomacy with both India and Pakistan. To avoid the mistakes of the past, we must make clear that our relationship with Pakistan is grounded in support for Pakistan's democratic institutions and the Pakistani people. And to demonstrate through deeds as well as words a commitment that is enduring, we must stand for lasting opportunity.
A campaign against extremism will not succeed with bullets or bombs alone. Al Qaeda offers the people of Pakistan nothing but destruction. We stand for something different. So today, I am calling upon Congress to pass a bipartisan bill co-sponsored by John Kerry and Richard Lugar that authorizes $1.5 billion in direct support to the Pakistani people every year over the next five years – resources that will build schools, roads, and hospitals, and strengthen Pakistan's democracy. I'm also calling on Congress to pass a bipartisan bill co-sponsored by Maria Cantwell, Chris Van Hollen and Peter Hoekstra that creates opportunity zones in the border region to develop the economy and bring hope to places plagued by violence. And we will ask our friends and allies to do their part – including at the donors conference in Tokyo next month.
I do not ask for this support lightly. These are challenging times, and resources are stretched. But the American people must understand that this is a down payment on our own future – because the security of our two countries is shared. Pakistan's government must be a stronger partner in destroying these safe-havens, and we must isolate al Qaeda from the Pakistani people.
These steps in Pakistan are also indispensable to our effort in Afghanistan, which will see no end to violence if insurgents move freely back and forth across the border.
Security demands a new sense of shared responsibility. That is why we will launch a standing, trilateral dialogue among the United States, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Our nations will meet regularly, with Secretary Clinton and Secretary Gates leading our effort. Together, we must enhance intelligence sharing and military cooperation along the border, while addressing issues of common concern like trade, energy, and economic development.
This is just one part of a comprehensive strategy to prevent Afghanistan from becoming the al Qaeda safe-haven that it was before 9/11. To succeed, we and our friends and allies must reverse the Taliban's gains, and promote a more capable and accountable Afghan government.
Our troops have fought bravely against a ruthless enemy. Our civilians have made great sacrifices. Our allies have borne a heavy burden. Afghans have suffered and sacrificed for their future. But for six years, Afghanistan has been denied the resources that it demands because of the war in Iraq. Now, we must make a commitment that can accomplish our goals.
I have already ordered the deployment of 17,000 troops that had been requested by General McKiernan for many months. These soldiers and Marines will take the fight to the Taliban in the south and east, and give us a greater capacity to partner with Afghan Security Forces and to go after insurgents along the border. This push will also help provide security in advance of the important presidential election in August.
At the same time, we will shift the emphasis of our mission to training and increasing the size of Afghan Security Forces, so that they can eventually take the lead in securing their country. That is how we will prepare Afghans to take responsibility for their security, and how we will ultimately be able to bring our troops home.
For three years, our commanders have been clear about the resources they need for training. Those resources have been denied because of the war in Iraq. Now, that will change. The additional troops that we deployed have already increased our training capacity. Later this spring we will deploy approximately 4,000 U.S. troops to train Afghan Security Forces. For the first time, this will fully resource our effort to train and support the Afghan Army and Police. Every American unit in Afghanistan will be partnered with an Afghan unit, and we will seek additional trainers from our NATO allies to ensure that every Afghan unit has a coalition partner. We will accelerate our efforts to build an Afghan Army of 134,000 and a police force of 82,000 so that we can meet these goals by 2011 – and increases in Afghan forces may very well be needed as our plans to turn over security responsibility to the Afghans go forward.
This push must be joined by a dramatic increase in our civilian effort. Afghanistan has an elected government, but it is undermined by corruption and has difficulty delivering basic services to its people. The economy is undercut by a booming narcotics trade that encourages criminality and funds the insurgency. The people of Afghanistan seek the promise of a better future. Yet once again, have seen the hope of a new day darkened by violence and uncertainty.
To advance security, opportunity, and justice – not just in Kabul, but from the bottom up in the provinces – we need agricultural specialists and educators; engineers and lawyers. That is how we can help the Afghan government serve its people, and develop an economy that isn't dominated by illicit drugs. That is why I am ordering a substantial increase in our civilians on the ground. And that is why we must seek civilian support from our partners and allies, from the United Nations and international aid organizations – an effort that Secretary Clinton will carry forward next week in the Hague.
At a time of economic crisis, it is tempting to believe that we can short-change this civilian effort. But make no mistake: our efforts will fail in Afghanistan and Pakistan if we don't invest in their future. That is why my budget includes indispensable investments in our State Department and foreign assistance programs. These investments relieve the burden on our troops. They contribute directly to security. They make the American people safer. And they save us an enormous amount of money in the long run – because it is far cheaper to train a policeman to secure their village or to help a farmer seed a crop, than it is to send our troops to fight tour after tour of duty with no transition to Afghan responsibility.
As we provide these resources, the days of unaccountable spending, no-bid contracts, and wasteful reconstruction must end. So my budget will increase funding for a strong Inspector General at both the State Department and USAID, and include robust funding for the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction.
And I want to be clear: we cannot turn a blind eye to the corruption that causes Afghans to lose faith in their own leaders. Instead, we will seek a new compact with the Afghan government that cracks down on corrupt behavior, and sets clear benchmarks for international assistance so that it is used to provide for the needs of the Afghan people.
In a country with extreme poverty that has been at war for decades, there will also be no peace without reconciliation among former enemies. I have no illusions that this will be easy. In Iraq, we had success in reaching out to former adversaries to isolate and target al Qaeda. We must pursue a similar process in Afghanistan, while understanding that it is a very different country.
There is an uncompromising core of the Taliban. They must be met with force, and they must be defeated. But there are also those who have taken up arms because of coercion, or simply for a price. These Afghans must have the option to choose a different course. That is why we will work with local leaders, the Afghan government, and international partners to have a reconciliation process in every province. As their ranks dwindle, an enemy that has nothing to offer the Afghan people but terror and repression must be further isolated. And we will continue to support the basic human rights of all Afghans – including women and girls.
Going forward, we will not blindly stay the course. Instead, we will set clear metrics to measure progress and hold ourselves accountable. We'll consistently assess our efforts to train Afghan Security Forces, and our progress in combating insurgents. We will measure the growth of Afghanistan's economy, and its illicit narcotics production. And we will review whether we are using the right tools and tactics to make progress towards accomplishing our goals.
None of the steps that I have outlined will be easy, and none should be taken by America alone. The world cannot afford the price that will come due if Afghanistan slides back into chaos or al Qaeda operates unchecked. We have a shared responsibility to act – not because we seek to project power for its own sake, but because our own peace and security depends upon it. And what's at stake now is not just our own security – it is the very idea that free nations can come together on behalf of our common security. That was the founding cause of NATO six decades ago. That must be our common purpose today.
My Administration is committed to strengthening international organizations and collective action, and that will be my message next week in Europe. As America does more, we will ask others to join us in doing their part. From our partners and NATO allies, we seek not simply troops, but rather clearly defined capabilities: supporting the Afghan elections, training Afghan Security Forces, and a greater civilian commitment to the Afghan people. For the United Nations, we seek greater progress for its mandate to coordinate international action and assistance, and to strengthen Afghan institutions.
And finally, together with the United Nations, we will forge a new Contact Group for Afghanistan and Pakistan that brings together all who should have a stake in the security of the region – our NATO allies and other partners, but also the Central Asian states, the Gulf nations and Iran; Russia, India and China. None of these nations benefit from a base for al Qaeda terrorists, and a region that descends into chaos. All have a stake in the promise of lasting peace and security and development.
That is true, above all, for the coalition that has fought together in Afghanistan, side by side with Afghans. The sacrifices have been enormous. Nearly 700 Americans have lost their lives. Troops from over twenty other countries have also paid the ultimate price. All Americans honor the service and cherish the friendship of those who have fought, and worked, and bled by our side. And all Americans are awed by the service of our own men and women in uniform, who have borne a burden as great as any other generation's. They and their families embody the example of selfless sacrifice.
The United States of America did not choose to fight a war in Afghanistan. Nearly 3,000 of our people were killed on September 11, 2001, for doing nothing more than going about their daily lives. Al Qaeda and its allies have since killed thousands of people in many countries. Most of the blood on their hands is the blood of Muslims, who al Qaeda has killed and maimed in far greater numbers than any other people. That is the future that al Qaeda is offering to the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan – a future without opportunity or hope; a future without justice or peace.
The road ahead will be long. There will be difficult days. But we will seek lasting partnerships with Afghanistan and Pakistan that serve the promise of a new day for their people. And we will use all elements of our national power to defeat al Qaeda, and to defend America, our allies, and all who seek a better future. Because the United States of America stands for peace and security, justice and opportunity. That is who we are, and that is what history calls on us to do once more.
Thank you, God Bless You, and God Bless the United States of America.
-----------------------------------------------------------
N A D E E M M A L I K
Director Programme
AAJ TV
ISLAMABAD
00-92-321-5117511
nadeem.malik@hotmail.com
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White Paper of the Interagency Policy Group’s Report on U.S. Policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan
White Paper of the Interagency Policy Group's Report on U.S. Policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan
The United States has a vital national security interest in addressing the current and potential security threats posed by extremists in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In Pakistan, al Qaeda and other groups of jihadist terrorists are planning new terror attacks. Their targets remain the U.S. homeland, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Europe, Australia, our allies in the Middle East, and other targets of opportunity. The growing size of the space in which they are operating is a direct result of the terrorist/insurgent activities of the Taliban and related organizations. At the same time, this group seeks to reestablish their old sanctuaries in Afghanistan.
Therefore, the core goal of the U.S. must be to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda and its safe havens in Pakistan, and to prevent their return to Pakistan or Afghanistan.
The ability of extremists in Pakistan to undermine Afghanistan is proven, while insurgency in Afghanistan feeds instability in Pakistan. The threat that al Qaeda poses to the United States and our allies in Pakistan - including the possibility of extremists obtaining fissile material - is all too real. Without more effective action against these groups in Pakistan, Afghanistan will face continuing instability.
Objectives
Achieving our core goal is vital to U.S. national security. It requires, first of all, realistic and achievable objectives. These include:
· Disrupting terrorist networks in Afghanistan and especially Pakistan to degrade any ability they have to plan and launch international terrorist attacks.
· Promoting a more capable, accountable, and effective government in Afghanistan that serves the Afghan people and can eventually function, especially regarding internal security, with limited international support.
· Developing increasingly self-reliant Afghan security forces that can lead the counterinsurgency and counterterrorism fight with reduced U.S. assistance.
· Assisting efforts to enhance civilian control and stable constitutional government in Pakistan and a vibrant economy that provides opportunity for the people of Pakistan.
· Involving the international community to actively assist in addressing these objectives for Afghanistan and Pakistan, with an important leadership role for the UN.
A New Way Forward
These are daunting tasks. They require a new way of thinking about the challenges, a wide ranging diplomatic strategy to build support for our efforts, enhanced engagement with the publics in the region and at home, and a realization that all elements of international power –
diplomatic, informational, military and economic - must be brought to bear. They will also require a significant change in the management, resources, and focus of our foreign assistance.
Our diplomatic effort should be based on building a clear consensus behind the common core goal and supporting objectives. To this end, we will explore creating new diplomatic mechanisms, including establishing a "Contact Group" and a regional security and economic cooperation forum. The trilateral U.S.-Pakistan-Afghanistan effort of February 24-26, 2009 will be continued and broadened, into the next meeting planned for early May, in Washington.
The United States must overcome the 'trust deficit' it faces in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where many believe that we are not a reliable long-term partner. We must engage the Afghan people in ways that demonstrate our commitment to promoting a legitimate and capable Afghan government with economic progress. We must engage the Pakistani people based on our long-term commitment to helping them build a stable economy, a stronger democracy, and a vibrant civil society.
A strategic communications program must be created, made more effective, and resourced. This new strategy will have no chance of success without better civil-military coordination by U.S. agencies, a significant increase of civilian resources, and a new model of how we allocate and use these resources. For too long, U.S. and international assistance efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan have suffered from being ill-organized and significantly under-resourced in some areas. A large portion of development assistance ends up being spent on international consultants and overhead, and virtually no impact assessments have yet been done on our assistance programs.
We must ensure that our assistance to both Afghanistan and Pakistan is aligned with our core goals and objectives. This will involve assistance that is geared to strengthening government capacity and the message that assistance will be limited without the achievement of results.
Additional assistance to Afghanistan must be accompanied by concrete mechanisms to ensure greater government accountability. In a country that is 70 percent rural, and where the Taliban recruiting base is primarily among under-employed youths, a complete overhaul of our civilian assistance strategy is necessary; agricultural sector job creation is an essential first step to undercutting the appeal of al Qaeda and its allies. Increased assistance to Pakistan will be limited without a greater willingness to cooperate with us to eliminate the sanctuary enjoyed by al Qaeda and other extremist groups, as well as a greater commitment to economic reforms that
will raise the living standard of ordinary Pakistanis, including in the border regions of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, the North West Frontier Province, and Baluchistan.
SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS FOR AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTAN
The following steps must be done in concert to produce the desired end state: the removal of al-Qaeda's sanctuary, effective democratic government control in Pakistan, and a self-reliant Afghanistan that will enable a withdrawal of combat forces while sustaining our commitment to political and economic development.
· Executing and resourcing an integrated civilian-military counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.
Our military forces in Afghanistan, including those recently approved by the President, should be utilized for two priority missions: 1) securing Afghanistan's south and east against a return of al Qaeda and its allies, to provide a space for the Afghani government to establish effective government control and 2) providing the Afghan security forces with the mentoring needed to expand rapidly, take the lead in effective counterinsurgency operations, and allow us and our partners to wind down our combat operations.
Our counter-insurgency strategy must integrate population security with building effective local governance and economic development. We will establish the security needed to provide space and time for stabilization and reconstruction activities.
To prevent future attacks on the U.S. and its allies - including the local populace - the development of a strategic communications strategy to counter the terror information campaign is urgent. This has proved successful in Iraq (where the U.S. military has made a significant effort in this area) and should be developed in Afghanistan as a top priority to improve the image of the United States and its allies. The strategic communications plan -- including electronic media, telecom, and radio -- shall include options on how best to counter the propaganda that is key to the enemy's terror campaign.
· Resourcing and prioritizing civilian assistance in Afghanistan
By increasing civilian capacity we will strengthen the relationship between the Afghan people and their government. A dramatic increase in Afghan civilian expertise is needed to facilitate the development of systems and institutions particularly at the provincial and local levels, provide basic infrastructure, and create economic alternatives to the insurgency at all levels of Afghan society, particularly in agriculture. The United States should play an important part in providing that expertise, but responding effectively to Afghanistan's needs will require that allies, partners, the UN and other international organizations, and non-governmental organizations significantly increase their involvement in Afghanistan.
· Expanding the Afghan National Security Forces: Army and Police
To be capable of assuming the security mission from U.S. forces in Afghanistan's south and east, the Afghan National Security Forces must substantially increase its size and capability. Initially this will require a more rapid build-up of the Afghan Army and police up to 134,000 and 82,000 over the next two years, with additional enlargements as circumstances and resources warrant.
The international community must assume responsibility for funding this significantly enhanced Afghan security force for an extended period. We will also have to provide support for other Afghan security forces such as the Afghan Public Protection Force. Salaries paid to Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police must become more competitive with those paid by the insurgents.
Over time, as security conditions change, we should continue to reassess Afghan National Security Forces size, as it will be affected by such factors as: the overall security situation, the capabilities of the Afghan National Security Forces, and the rate at which we can grow local security forces and integrate them into the overall ANSF structure.
· Engaging the Afghan government and bolstering its legitimacy
International support for the election will be necessary for a successful outcome. We should do everything necessary to ensure the security and legitimacy of voter registration, elections, and vote counting. The international military presence should help the Afghan security forces provide security before, during and after the election. International monitoring will also be required to ensure legitimacy and oversee Afghanistan's polling sites.
The overall legitimacy of the Afghan government is also undermined by rampant corruption and a failure to provide basic services to much of the population over the past 7 years. Where Afghan systems and institutions have benefited from high quality technical assistance and
mentoring, they have made great progress. Making such support more consistent with qualified mentors to advise and monitor officials, pushing such efforts to the provincial and district levels, and channeling more assistance through Afghan institutions benefiting from this high quality support will help restore and maintain the legitimacy of the Afghan government.
· Encouraging Afghan government efforts to integrate reconcilable insurgents
While Mullah Omar and the Taliban's hard core that have aligned themselves with al Qaeda are not reconcilable and we cannot make a deal that includes them, the war in Afghanistan cannot be won without convincing non-ideologically committed insurgents to lay down their arms, reject al Qaeda, and accept the Afghan Constitution.
Practical integration must not become a mechanism for instituting medieval social policies that give up the quest for gender equality and human rights. We can help this process along by exploiting differences among the insurgents to divide the Taliban's true believers from less committed fighters.
Integration must be Afghan-led. An office should be created in every province and we should support efforts by the Independent Directorate of Local Governance to develop a reconciliation effort targeting mid-to-low level insurgents to be led by provincial governors. We should also explore ways to rehabilitate captured insurgents drawing on lessons learned from similar programs in Iraq and other countries.
· Including provincial and local governments in our capacity building efforts
We need to work with the Afghan government to refocus civilian assistance and capacity-building programs on building up competent provincial and local governments where they can more directly serve the people and connect them to their government.
· Breaking the link between narcotics and the insurgency
Besides the global consequences of the drug trade, the Afghan narcotics problem causes great concern due to its ties to the insurgency, the fact that it is the major driver of corruption in Afghanistan, and distorts the legal economy. The NATO/International Security Assistance Forces and U.S. forces should use their authorities to directly support Afghan counternarcotics units during the interdiction of narco-traffickers. The new authorities permit the destruction of labs, drug storage facilities, drug processing equipment, and drug caches and should contribute to breaking the drug-insurgency funding nexus and the corruption associated with the opium/heroin trade. Crop substitution and alternative livelihood programs that are a key pillar of effectively countering narcotics have been disastrously underdeveloped and under-resourced, however, and the narcotics trade will persist until such programs allow Afghans to reclaim their land for licit agriculture. Targeting those who grow the poppy will continue, but the focus will shift to higher level drug lords.
· Mobilizing greater international political support of our objectives in Afghanistan
We need to do more to build a shared understanding of what is at stake in Afghanistan, while engaging other actors and offering them the opportunity to advance our mutual interests by cooperating with us.
· Bolstering Afghanistan-Pakistan cooperation
We need to institutionalize stronger mechanisms for bilateral and trilateral cooperation. During the process of this review, inter-agency teams from Afghanistan and Pakistan came to Washington, DC for trilateral meetings. This new forum should continue and serve as the basis for enhanced bilateral and trilateral cooperation.
· Engaging and focusing Islamabad on the common threat
Successfully shutting down the Pakistani safe haven for extremists will also require consistent and intensive strategic engagement with Pakistani leadership in both the civilian and military spheres. The engagement must be conducted in a way that respects, and indeed enhances, democratic civilian authority.
· Assisting Pakistan's capability to fight extremists
It is vital to strengthen our efforts to both develop and operationally enable Pakistani security forces so they are capable of succeeding in sustained counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations. In part this will include increased U.S. military assistance for helicopters to provide air mobility, night vision equipment, and training and equipment specifically for Pakistani Special Operation Forces and their Frontier Corps.
· Increasing and broadening assistance in Pakistan
Increasing economic assistance to Pakistan - to include direct budget support, development assistance, infrastructure investment, and technical advice on making sound economic policy adjustments - and strengthening trade relations will maximize support for our policy aims;
it should also help to provide longer-term economic stability. Our assistance should focus on long-term capacity building, on agricultural sector job creation, education and training, and on infrastructure requirements. Assistance should also support Pakistani efforts to 'hold and build' in western Pakistan as a part of its counterinsurgency efforts.
· Exploring other areas of economic cooperation with Pakistan
We need to enhance bilateral and regional trade possibilities, in part through implementing Reconstruction Opportunity Zones (which were recently re-introduced in Congress) and encouraging foreign investment in key sectors, such as energy. In addition, assisting Islamabad with developing a concrete strategy for utilizing donor aid would increase Islamabad's chances for garnering additional support from the international community.
· Strengthening Pakistani government capacity
Strengthening the civilian, democratic government must be a centerpiece of our overall effort. Key efforts should include fostering the reform of provincial and local governance in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the North West Frontier Province. We need to help Islamabad enhance the services and support in areas cleared of insurgents so that they have a real chance in preventing insurgents from returning to those areas.
With international partners, we should also promote the development of regional organizations that focus on economic and security cooperation, as well as fostering productive political dialogue.
· Asking for assistance from allies for Afghanistan and Pakistan
Our efforts are a struggle against forces that pose a direct threat to the entire international community. While reaching out to allies and partners for their political support, we should also ask them to provide the necessary resources to accomplish our shared objectives. They have the same interest in denying terrorists and extremists sanctuaries in Pakistan and Afghanistan that we do. In approaching allies we should emphasize that our new approach is integrated between civilian and military elements and in looking at Afghanistan and Pakistan as one theater for diplomacy.
For the mission in Afghanistan, we should continue to seek contributions for combat forces, trainers and mentors, strategic lift, and equipment from our friends and allies. The U.S. will also pursue major international funding and experts for civilian reconstruction and Afghan government capacity building at the national and especially the provincial and local levels.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan should take the lead in exploring ways that donors could systematically share the burden of building Afghan capacity and providing civilian expertise. As part of its coordination role for civilian assistance, the UN should consolidate requests and identify gaps.
In Pakistan, the U.S. will urge allies to work closely with us both bilaterally and through the 'Friends of Democratic Pakistan' to coordinate economic and development assistance,
including additional direct budget support, development assistance, infrastructure investment and technical advice on making sound economic policy adjustments. Similarly, we should ask them to provide technical advice and assistance in strengthening government capacity, such as improving Pakistani institutions.
Conclusion
There are no quick fixes to achieve U.S. national security interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The danger of failure is real and the implications are grave. In 2009-2010 the Taliban's momentum must be reversed in Afghanistan and the international community must work with Pakistan to disrupt the threats to security along Pakistan's western border.
This new strategy of focusing on our core goal - to disrupt, dismantle, and eventually destroy extremists and their safe havens within both nations, although with different tactics - will require immediate action, sustained commitment, and substantial resources. The United States is committed to working with our partners in the region and the international community to address this challenging but essential security goal.
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Plz save Pakistan and Pashtuns : Pakistan is on Target of USA after Iraq/Afghanistan
Dear Sir,
My family basically hails from KOONI GURAM (Wana) but now days settled in Lucky Marvat. I am married presently residing in Karachi, a city of more than 18 million souls. The terrible condition of Muslims, dark clouds over Pakistan future and Pashtuns genocide is compelling s to write and highlight these critical issues. We can't trust main stream local and international media (Blind, Deaf) as some thing is terribly wrong the way world is shown Terrorism, Taliban, Al-Qaeda, NATO Force, US, Tribal areas. Foreign powers and their local agents responsible for killing BB, May-12, Red Mosque will tear apart Pakistan, if someone tried to point toward them. The only safe way out for them is complete destruction of Pakistan.
Recently many groups on face book/orkut/blogs and NGOs in Islamabad have popped which are spreading USA, CIA and RAW propaganda against Islam and Pakistan in name of Pashtuns and Baluch. These agents pretended themselves to be Pashtun or Baluch or Muslims, however they are all are Fake mostly living abroad.
As concerned Pashtun for Pakistan, I would request all Pakistani and Muslim brothers to please fight this cyber war. We should not let Pakistan become a escape goat for NATO/US failure in Afghanistan. We should not pay the price for all US/CIA agents like Karzai, Zardari and Mush, whose policies have brought Pakistan, the region and Muslim world on brink of disaster. Please visit following anti-Pakistan and anti-Islam propaganda in name of Pashtuns oppression.
Pakhtuns/Pashtuns
http://www.facebook.com/board.php?uid=2204916119
Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy (AIRRA)
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=73076861210
http://www.airra.org/index.htm
I'm a Pathan and proud of it!
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2210018708
We Got Lucky... We're Pashtun.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2224385126
There are many other Groups. Please search and give few minutes daily to our Islam, country and our mother land.
Pashtuns are target from every corner; however they do not want Pakistan to break up. We may crticize our Pakistan but not at price of our freedom. We can go to the various online sites of different organizations like Human Rights, UN, Embassies and Amnesty International, various news papers, TV stations, Media etc in order to lodge our grievances to various authorities, columnist, writers, TV anchors and other watch dog agencies. We can also fight the media battle through phone. We can call the local radio or TV station especially we email international deafs and blinds like CNN, BBC, Fox. We can discuss Palestine, Kashmir, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan. That's what's needed: Not the stories about hijab, Al-Qaeda and Taliban. We can distribute all articles, themes written by various scholars, writers on US, NATO and CIA atrocities across the globe. We should circulate especially the articles written by Non Muslims/foriegn authors against US imperilism in favor of Muslim Ummah. Success stories in this regard should also be celebrated publicly and disturbed online to all. Muslim Media students/graduate/firms should give extensive coverage to every minute success in this Jihad. Moreover live talk shows should be arranged for brainstorming for making strategy for tackling this cyber war and proganda against Pakistan.
"One person can't do everything but everyone can do something"
Our corrupt rulers will doom us in worst possible way. We should use our freedom of expression to announce to at least 10 persons per week that we love peace and our Muslim brothers more than our lives and condemn the heinous acts of US, NATO agianst Muslims and Pashtuns in Afghanistan and Tribal Area. Please try to print this article in your Local magazines, newspapers, newsletter, etc. Forward this email to as many people as possible. Bare minimum requested from each of us is to forward this email to as many as people possible frequently.
Thank you and best regards.
FM Shah Marvat
Thursday, March 26, 2009
The Vatican says Islamic finance system may help Western banks in crisis as alternative to capitalistm.
The Vatican says Islamic finance system may help Western banks in crisis as alternative to capitalistm.
Friday, 06 March 2009 15:10
World Bulletin / News Desk
The Vatican offered Islamic finance principles to Western banks as a solution for worldwide economic crisis.
Daily Vatican newspaper, 'L'Osservatore Romano, reported that Islamic banking system may help to overcome global crisis, Turkish media reported.
The Vatican said banks should look at the ethical rules of Islamic finance to restore confidence amongst their clients at a time of global economic crisis.
"The ethical principles on which Islamic finance is based may bring banks closer to their clients and to the true spirit which should mark every financial service," the Vatican 's official newspaper Osservatore Romano said in an article in its latest issue late yesterday.
Author Loretta Napoleoni and Abaxbank Spa fixed income strategist, Claudia Segre, say in the article that "Western banks could use tools such as the Islamic bonds, known as sukuk, as collateral". Sukuk may be used to fund the "'car industry or the next Olympic Games in London ," they said.
They also said that profit share, gained from sukuk, may be an alternative to the interest. They underlined that sukuk system could help automotive sector and support investments in infrastructure area.
Islamic sukuk system is similar to bonos of capitalist system. But in sukuk, money is invested concrete projects and profit share is distributed to clients instead of interest earned.
Pope Benedict XVI in an Oct. 7 speech reflected on crashing financial markets saying that "money vanishes, it is nothing" and concluded that "the only solid reality is the word of God." The Vatican has been paying attention to the global financial meltdown and ran articles in its official newspaper that criticize the free-market model for having "grown too much and badly in the past two decades."
The Osservatore's editor, Giovanni Maria Vian, said that "the great religions have always had a common attention to the human dimension of the economy," Corriere della Sera reported today.
Zalmay Khalilzad advises Asif Zardari
U.N. Envoy's Ties to Pakistani Are Questioned
Mr. Khalilzad had spoken by telephone with Mr. Zardari, the leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party, several times a week for the past month until he was confronted about the unauthorized contacts, a senior United States official said. Other officials said Mr. Khalilzad had planned to meet with Mr. Zardari privately next Tuesday while on vacation in Dubai, in a session that was canceled only after Richard A. Boucher, the assistant secretary of state for South Asia, learned from Mr. Zardari himself that the ambassador was providing "advice and help."
"Can I ask what sort of 'advice and help' you are providing?" Mr. Boucher wrote in an angry e-mail message to Mr. Khalilzad. "What sort of channel is this? Governmental, private, personnel?" Copies of the message were sent to others at the highest levels of the State Department; the message was provided to The New York Times by an administration official who had received a copy.
Officially, the United States has remained neutral in the contest to succeed Mr. Musharraf, and there is concern within the State Department that the discussions between Mr. Khalilzad and Mr. Zardari, the widower of Benazir Bhutto, a former prime minister, could leave the impression that the United States is taking sides in Pakistan's already chaotic internal politics.
Mr. Khalilzad also had a close relationship with Ms. Bhutto, flying with her last summer on a private jet to a policy gathering in Aspen, Colo. Ms. Bhutto was assassinated in Pakistan in December.
The conduct by Mr. Khalilzad, who is Afghan by birth, has also raised hackles because of speculation that he might seek to succeed Hamid Karzai as president of Afghanistan. Mr. Khalilzad, who was the Bush administration's second ambassador to Afghanistan, has also kept in close contact with Afghan officials, angering William Wood, the current American ambassador, said officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter of Mr. Khalilzad's contacts. Mr. Khalilzad has said he has no plans to seek the Afghan presidency.
Through his spokesman, he said he had been friends with Mr. Zardari for years. "Ambassador Khalilzad had planned to meet socially with Zardari during his personal vacation," said Richard A. Grenell, the spokesman for the United States Mission to the United Nations. "But because Zardari is now a presidential candidate, Ambassador Khalilzad postponed the meeting, after consulting with senior State Department officials and Zardari himself."
A senior American official said that Mr. Khalilzad had been advised to "stop speaking freely" to Mr. Zardari, and that it was not clear whether he would face any disciplinary action.
In 1979, Andrew Young was forced to resign as the American ambassador to the United Nations over his unauthorized contacts with the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Administration officials described John D. Negroponte, the deputy secretary of state, and Mr. Boucher as angry over the conduct of Mr. Khalilzad because as United Nations ambassador he has no direct responsibility for American relations with Pakistan. Those dealings have been handled principally by Mr. Negroponte, Mr. Boucher and Anne W. Patterson, the American ambassador to Pakistan. Mr. Negroponte previously was the United Nations ambassador, and Ms. Patterson the acting ambassador.
"Why do I have to learn about this from Asif after it's all set up?" Mr. Boucher wrote in the Aug. 18 message, referring to the planned Dubai meeting with Mr. Zardari. "We have maintained a public line that we are not involved in the politics or the details. We are merely keeping in touch with the parties. Can I say that honestly if you're providing 'advice and help'? Please advise and help me so that I understand what's going on here."
This is not the first time Mr. Khalilzad has gotten into trouble for unauthorized contacts. In January, White House officials expressed anger about an unauthorized appearance in which Mr. Khalilzad sat beside the Iranian foreign minister at a panel of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The United States does not have diplomatic relations with Iran, and a request from Mr. Khalilzad to be part of the United States delegation to Davos had been turned down by officials at the State Department and the White House, a senior administration official said.
Richard C. Holbrooke, a former ambassador to the United Nations under President Clinton, said the administration was sending conflicting signals. "It is not possible to conduct coherent foreign policy if senior officials are freelancing," he said.
It has long been known that Mr. Zardari, who has been locked in a power struggle with Mr. Musharraf and Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister whose party left the governing coalition on Monday, planned to run for president, administration officials and foreign policy experts said.
"I know that Zardari's interest in becoming president has been clear for quite some time," said Teresita C. Schaffer, a Pakistan expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
The Bush administration has long been uneasy with the idea of Mr. Sharif as a potential leader of Pakistan, and now that Mr. Musharraf is out of the picture, the administration, despite public protestation of neutrality, is seeking another ally.
"It distresses me that the U.S. government has not learned yet that having 'our guy' is not a winning strategy in Pakistan," Ms. Schaffer said. "Whoever 'our guy' is isn't going to be the only guy in town, and if we go into it with that view, we'll bump up against a lot of other guys in Pakistan."
A senior Pakistani official said that the relationship between Mr. Khalilzad and Mr. Zardari went back several years, and that the men developed a friendship while Mr. Zardari was spending time in New York with Ms. Bhutto.
The Pakistani official said the consultations between the men were an open exchange of information, with each one giving insight into the political landscape in his capital.
"Mr. Khalilzad, being a political animal, understood the value of reaching out to Pakistan's political leadership long before the bureaucrats at the State Department realized this would be useful at a future date," the official said. The ambassador "did not make policy or change policy, he just became an alternate channel," the official said.
Of Mr. Khalilzad's Pakistan contacts, Sean I. McCormack, the State Department spokesman, said, "Our very clear policy is that the Pakistanis have to work out any domestic political questions for themselves." Gordon D. Johndroe, a White House spokesman, said, "The Pakistani elections are an internal matter for the Pakistani people."
Correction: August 30, 2008
An article on Tuesday about complaints by senior Bush administration officials that
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Afghan Strikes by Taliban Get Pakistan Help, U.S. Aides Say
Afghan Strikes by Taliban Get Pakistan Help, U.S. Aides Say
The support consists of money, military supplies and strategic planning guidance to Taliban commanders who are gearing up to confront the international force in Afghanistan that will soon include some 17,000 American reinforcements.
Support for the Taliban, as well as other militant groups, is coordinated by operatives inside the shadowy S Wing of Pakistan's spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, the officials said. There is even evidence that ISI operatives meet regularly with Taliban commanders to discuss whether to intensify or scale back violence before the Afghan elections.
Details of the ISI's continuing ties to militant groups were described by a half-dozen American, Pakistani and other security officials during recent interviews in Washington and the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. All requested anonymity because they were discussing classified and sensitive intelligence information.
The American officials said proof of the ties between the Taliban and Pakistani spies came from electronic surveillance and trusted informants. The Pakistani officials interviewed said that they had firsthand knowledge of the connections, though they denied that the ties were strengthening the insurgency.
American officials have complained for more than a year about the ISI's support to groups like the Taliban. But the new details reveal that the spy agency is aiding a broader array of militant networks with more diverse types of support than was previously known — even months after Pakistani officials said that the days of the ISI's playing a "double game" had ended.
Pakistan's military and civilian leaders publicly deny any government ties to militant groups, and American officials say it is unlikely that top officials in Islamabad are directly coordinating the clandestine efforts. American officials have also said that midlevel ISI operatives occasionally cultivate relationships that are not approved by their bosses.
In a sign of just how resigned Western officials are to the ties, the British government has sent several dispatches to Islamabad in recent months asking that the ISI use its strategy meetings with the Taliban to persuade its commanders to scale back violence in Afghanistan before the August presidential election there, according to one official.
But the inability, or unwillingness, of the embattled civilian government, led by President Asif Ali Zardari, to break the ties that bind the ISI to the militants illustrates the complexities of a region of shifting alliances. Obama administration officials admit that they are struggling to understand these allegiances as they try to forge a strategy to quell violence in Afghanistan, which has intensified because of a resurgent Taliban. Fighting this insurgency is difficult enough, officials said, without having to worry about an allied spy service's supporting the enemy.
But the Pakistanis offered a more nuanced portrait. They said the contacts were less threatening than the American officials depicted and were part of a strategy to maintain influence in Afghanistan for the day when American forces would withdraw and leave what they fear could be a power vacuum to be filled by India, Pakistan's archenemy. A senior Pakistani military officer said, "In intelligence, you have to be in contact with your enemy or you are running blind."
The ISI helped create and nurture the Taliban movement in the 1990s to bring stability to a nation that had been devastated by years of civil war between rival warlords, and one Pakistani official explained that Islamabad needed to use groups like the Taliban as "proxy forces to preserve our interests."
A spokesman at the Pakistani Embassy in Washington declined to comment for this article.
Over the past year, a parade of senior American diplomats, military officers and intelligence officials has flown to Islamabad to urge Pakistan's civilian and military leaders to cut off support for militant groups, and Washington has threatened to put conditions on more than $1 billion in annual military aid to Pakistan. On Saturday, the director of the C.I.A., Leon E. Panetta, met with top Pakistani officials in Islamabad.
Little is publicly known about the ISI's S Wing, which officials say directs intelligence operations outside of Pakistan. American officials said that the S Wing provided direct support to three major groups carrying out attacks in Afghanistan: the Taliban based in Quetta, Pakistan, commanded by Mullah Muhammad Omar; the militant network run by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar; and a different group run by the guerrilla leader Jalaluddin Haqqani.
Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, recently told senators that the Pakistanis "draw distinctions" among different militant groups.
"There are some they believe have to be hit and that we should cooperate on hitting, and there are others they think don't constitute as much of a threat to them and that they think are best left alone," Mr. Blair said.
The Haqqani network, which focuses its attacks on Afghanistan, is considered a strategic asset to Pakistan, according to American and Pakistani officials, in contrast to the militant network run by Baitullah Mehsud, which has the goal of overthrowing Pakistan's government.
Top American officials speak bluntly about how the situation has changed little since last summer, when evidence showed that ISI operatives helped plan the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, an attack that killed 54 people.
"They have been very attached to many of these extremist organizations, and it's my belief that in the long run, they have got to completely cut ties with those in order to really move in the right direction," Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said recently on "The Charlie Rose Show" on PBS.
The Taliban has been able to finance a military campaign inside Afghanistan largely through proceeds from the illegal drug trade and wealthy individuals from the Persian Gulf. But American officials said that when fighters needed fuel or ammunition to sustain their attacks against American troops, they would often turn to the ISI.
When the groups needed to replenish their ranks, it would be operatives from the S Wing who often slipped into radical madrasas across Pakistan to drum up recruits, the officials said.
The ISI support for militants extends beyond those operating in the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan. American officials said the spy agency had also shared intelligence with Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based militant group suspected in the deadly attacks in Mumbai, India, and provided protection for it.
Mr. Zardari took steps last summer to purge the ISI's top ranks after the United States confronted Pakistan with evidence about the Indian Embassy bombing. Mr. Zardari pledged that the ISI would be "handled," and that anyone working with militants would be dismissed.
Yet with the future of Mr. Zardari's government uncertain in the current political turmoil and with Obama officials seeing few immediate alternatives, American officials and outside experts said that Pakistan's military establishment appears to see little advantage in responding to the demands of civilian officials in Islamabad or Washington.
As a result, when the Haqqani fighters need to stay a step ahead of American forces stalking them on the ground and in the air, they rely on moles within the spy agency to tip them off to allied missions planned against them, American military officials said.
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U.S. Weighs Sharif as Partner in Pakistan
March 25, 2009
U.S. Weighs Sharif as Partner in Pakistan
Now, as the Obama administration completes its review of strategy toward the region this week, his sudden ascent has raised an urgent question: Can Mr. Sharif, 59, a populist politician close to Islamic parties, be a reliable partner? Or will he use his popular support to blunt the military's already fitful campaign against the insurgency of the Taliban and Al Qaeda?
A former two-time prime minister, Mr. Sharif once pressed for Islamic law for Pakistan, tested a nuclear bomb and was accused by his opponents of undemocratic behavior during his tenure in the late 1990s.
That political past has inspired distrust here and in Washington and left some concerned that Mr. Sharif is too close to the conservative Islamists sympathetic to the Taliban to lead a fight against the insurgents.
His supporters and other analysts say that Mr. Sharif is now a more mature politician, wiser after eight years of exile in Saudi Arabia and London, and that he is eager to prove he can work with Washington and to put his imprint on a workable approach toward stabilizing Pakistan. In any case, opponents and supporters alike note, Mr. Sharif has made himself a political leader Washington can no longer ignore.
Just weeks ago, Mr. Sharif appeared to be sidelined, when a Supreme Court ruling barred him from office, citing an earlier criminal conviction. After forcing the government to reinstate the chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who seems likely to reverse that decision, Mr. Sharif is now front and center in Pakistani politics.
His protest tapped a deep well of dissatisfaction with the government of President Asif Ali Zardari, who seems increasingly unable to rally Pakistanis behind the fight against the insurgents.
The new breadth of Mr. Sharif's support will make him either a drag or a spur to greater Pakistani cooperation, and it positions Mr. Sharif as a potential prime minister, if the already shaky public support for the Zardari government completely erodes.
"If Washington is going to carry Pakistan, it is important they do it with popular support," said Senator Enver Baig, a disaffected member of the governing Pakistan Peoples Party, who resigned from a party post last month. "There's the realization in Washington that he is the next guy we should talk to."
That would be a change. After Mr. Sharif's return from exile in late 2007, the Bush administration kept him at a distance, choosing instead to broker a power-sharing deal between Pervez Musharraf, the president at the time, and another former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto.
More secular in outlook, Ms. Bhutto and her Pakistan Peoples Party were considered more amenable allies for Washington. After Ms. Bhutto was assassinated in December 2007, her husband, Mr. Zardari, took up the party mantle.
Both Mr. Musharraf and Mr. Zardari forged their own alliances with Pakistan's religious parties. But Mr. Sharif's ties have raised deeper suspicion.
More nationalistic and religiously oriented, he and his party, the Pakistan Muslim League-N, have traditionally found common cause with the religious parties, some of which have run madrasas that have funneled fighters to the Taliban.
Those who worry that the insurgency will engulf the country are perplexed by what they see as Mr. Sharif's failure so far to mobilize a Pakistani public inured to its dangers.
"Nawaz Sharif is a reflection of Pakistani society," said Pervez Hoodbhoy, a physicist and a critic of current government policies. "He is silent on what matters most: the insurgency. What we need is a leader."
Some diplomats and analysts argue, however, that Mr. Sharif's affinity with the Islamic parties could now be an asset as Washington tries to win Pakistani support to fight the militants.
"We, and all sensible Pakistanis, need the support of Saudi Arabia and the more moderate Islamist parties, particularly Jamaat-e-Islami, if we are ever going to tame the jihadis," said a former American ambassador to Pakistan, Robert B. Oakley. "Nawaz's good standing with them is very, very important."
Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States, said Washington's suspicions of Mr. Sharif might actually be helpful.
"He is sufficiently distanced from the United States to be a credible partner in the eyes of Pakistanis," she said.
For his part, Mr. Sharif says the impression in Washington that he is too close to the Islamists is propaganda promoted by his political rivals.
Mr. Sharif and his aides point to his close relationship with former President Bill Clinton and recite a litany of decisions Mr. Sharif made as prime minister that were favorable to Washington, like his politically risky decision to support the United States in the Persian Gulf war in 1991.
Mr. Sharif, in a recent interview, emphasized the similarities between the approach he would take toward militancy and that currently being discussed in Washington, including separating the Taliban, whose members can be talked to, from Al Qaeda, whose adherents cannot.
Some experts are skeptical that Mr. Sharif can distinguish between the militants and the conservative Islamic parties. "There's no evidence that he understands the difference between these groups," said Stephen P. Cohen, a scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
Mr. Sharif served twice as prime minister, from 1990 to 1993, and then from 1997 to 1999. His second term was marked by a series of misadventures that rankled Washington, including his decision in 1998 to test Pakistan's nuclear weapons after India tested its arsenal.
In 1999, he introduced a parliamentary bill to enforce Islamic law, or Shariah, legislation that eventually failed in the Senate. Some of his supporters stormed the Supreme Court building in 1997.
But Mr. Sharif made some remarkable initiatives as well. Previously unheard of for a Pakistani leader, he met with the Indian prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, in early 1999.
In July 1999, he dashed to Washington in a gamble to avert war with India after the Pakistani Army, led by General Musharraf, made incursions into Indian-held territory in Kashmir. Mr. Sharif agreed to Mr. Clinton's demands to force the army to withdraw to its original positions. Two months later, General Musharraf ousted Mr. Sharif in a coup and forced him into exile.
How much Mr. Sharif has changed is a question many in Pakistan's elite are asking.
Pakistan's lawyers had agitated on behalf of the chief justice, Mr. Chaudhry, for two years. But it was not until Mr. Sharif backed the protests, bringing Jamaat-e-Islami with him, that the government was forced to cave in.
Aitzaz Ahsan, the leader of the lawyers' movement, said it would not be difficult for the United States to work with Mr. Sharif. On March 15, the Sunday of the protest, Mr. Ahsan accompanied Mr. Sharif in a two-and-a-half-ton, bulletproof Land Cruiser, as the men were swamped by crowds.
Their time together, Mr. Ahsan said, revealed an important characteristic about Mr. Sharif that Washington should know. "He's about personal relationships," he said. "If you befriend him, you can get him to move mountains."
-----------------------------------------------------------
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AAJ TV
ISLAMABAD
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Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali in Islamabad Tonight
http://www.friendskorner.com/forum/f247/islamabad-tonight-25th-march-2009-a-102322/
U.S. Weighs Sharif as Partner in Pakistan
Now, as the Obama administration completes its review of strategy toward the region this week, his sudden ascent has raised an urgent question: Can Mr. Sharif, 59, a populist politician close to Islamic parties, be a reliable partner? Or will he use his popular support to blunt the military's already fitful campaign against the insurgency of the Taliban and Al Qaeda?
A former two-time prime minister, Mr. Sharif once pressed for Islamic law for Pakistan, tested a nuclear bomb and was accused by his opponents of undemocratic behavior during his tenure in the late 1990s.
That political past has inspired distrust here and in Washington and left some concerned that Mr. Sharif is too close to the conservative Islamists sympathetic to the Taliban to lead a fight against the insurgents.
His supporters and other analysts say that Mr. Sharif is now a more mature politician, wiser after eight years of exile in Saudi Arabia and London, and that he is eager to prove he can work with Washington and to put his imprint on a workable approach toward stabilizing Pakistan. In any case, opponents and supporters alike note, Mr. Sharif has made himself a political leader Washington can no longer ignore.
Just weeks ago, Mr. Sharif appeared to be sidelined, when a Supreme Court ruling barred him from office, citing an earlier criminal conviction. After forcing the government to reinstate the chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who seems likely to reverse that decision, Mr. Sharif is now front and center in Pakistani politics.
His protest tapped a deep well of dissatisfaction with the government of President Asif Ali Zardari, who seems increasingly unable to rally Pakistanis behind the fight against the insurgents.
The new breadth of Mr. Sharif's support will make him either a drag or a spur to greater Pakistani cooperation, and it positions Mr. Sharif as a potential prime minister, if the already shaky public support for the Zardari government completely erodes.
"If Washington is going to carry Pakistan, it is important they do it with popular support," said Senator Enver Baig, a disaffected member of the governing Pakistan Peoples Party, who resigned from a party post last month. "There's the realization in Washington that he is the next guy we should talk to."
That would be a change. After Mr. Sharif's return from exile in late 2007, the Bush administration kept him at a distance, choosing instead to broker a power-sharing deal between Pervez Musharraf, the president at the time, and another former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto.
More secular in outlook, Ms. Bhutto and her Pakistan Peoples Party were considered more amenable allies for Washington. After Ms. Bhutto was assassinated in December 2007, her husband, Mr. Zardari, took up the party mantle.
Both Mr. Musharraf and Mr. Zardari forged their own alliances with Pakistan's religious parties. But Mr. Sharif's ties have raised deeper suspicion.
More nationalistic and religiously oriented, he and his party, the Pakistan Muslim League-N, have traditionally found common cause with the religious parties, some of which have run madrasas that have funneled fighters to the Taliban.
Those who worry that the insurgency will engulf the country are perplexed by what they see as Mr. Sharif's failure so far to mobilize a Pakistani public inured to its dangers.
"Nawaz Sharif is a reflection of Pakistani society," said Pervez Hoodbhoy, a physicist and a critic of current government policies. "He is silent on what matters most: the insurgency. What we need is a leader."
Some diplomats and analysts argue, however, that Mr. Sharif's affinity with the Islamic parties could now be an asset as Washington tries to win Pakistani support to fight the militants.
"We, and all sensible Pakistanis, need the support of Saudi Arabia and the more moderate Islamist parties, particularly Jamaat-e-Islami, if we are ever going to tame the jihadis," said a former American ambassador to Pakistan, Robert B. Oakley. "Nawaz's good standing with them is very, very important."
Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States, said Washington's suspicions of Mr. Sharif might actually be helpful.
"He is sufficiently distanced from the United States to be a credible partner in the eyes of Pakistanis," she said.
For his part, Mr. Sharif says the impression in Washington that he is too close to the Islamists is propaganda promoted by his political rivals.
Mr. Sharif and his aides point to his close relationship with former President Bill Clinton and recite a litany of decisions Mr. Sharif made as prime minister that were favorable to Washington, like his politically risky decision to support the United States in the Persian Gulf war in 1991.
Mr. Sharif, in a recent interview, emphasized the similarities between the approach he would take toward militancy and that currently being discussed in Washington, including separating the Taliban, whose members can be talked to, from Al Qaeda, whose adherents cannot.
Some experts are skeptical that Mr. Sharif can distinguish between the militants and the conservative Islamic parties. "There's no evidence that he understands the difference between these groups," said Stephen P. Cohen, a scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
Mr. Sharif served twice as prime minister, from 1990 to 1993, and then from 1997 to 1999. His second term was marked by a series of misadventures that rankled Washington, including his decision in 1998 to test Pakistan's nuclear weapons after India tested its arsenal.
In 1999, he introduced a parliamentary bill to enforce Islamic law, or Shariah, legislation that eventually failed in the Senate. Some of his supporters stormed the Supreme Court building in 1997.
But Mr. Sharif made some remarkable initiatives as well. Previously unheard of for a Pakistani leader, he met with the Indian prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, in early 1999.
In July 1999, he dashed to Washington in a gamble to avert war with India after the Pakistani Army, led by General Musharraf, made incursions into Indian-held territory in Kashmir. Mr. Sharif agreed to Mr. Clinton's demands to force the army to withdraw to its original positions. Two months later, General Musharraf ousted Mr. Sharif in a coup and forced him into exile.
How much Mr. Sharif has changed is a question many in Pakistan's elite are asking.
Pakistan's lawyers had agitated on behalf of the chief justice, Mr. Chaudhry, for two years. But it was not until Mr. Sharif backed the protests, bringing Jamaat-e-Islami with him, that the government was forced to cave in.
Aitzaz Ahsan, the leader of the lawyers' movement, said it would not be difficult for the United States to work with Mr. Sharif. On March 15, the Sunday of the protest, Mr. Ahsan accompanied Mr. Sharif in a two-and-a-half-ton, bulletproof Land Cruiser, as the men were swamped by crowds.
Their time together, Mr. Ahsan said, revealed an important characteristic about Mr. Sharif that Washington should know. "He's about personal relationships," he said. "If you befriend him, you can get him to move mountains."
-----------------------------------------------------------
N A D E E M M A L I K
Director Programme
AAJ TV
ISLAMABAD
00-92-321-5117511
nadeem.malik@hotmail.com
Invite your mail contacts to join your friends list with Windows Live Spaces. It's easy! Try it!
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
What if USA WAR FOR TERROR IS A LIE AND DECEPTION just like IRAQ Weapons of Mass Destructions.
What if USA and CIA WAR FOR TERROR IS A LIE AND DECEPTION
just like US Banks and Finance Institutions
US Banks and Finance Institutions were ALL RIGHT almost 10-12 months ago and all of sudden the world have found that lie and deceptions. They have shaken whole world.
USA Credibility is less than Zero.
What are the reasons due to which US actively promote, initiate wars, violence, conflicts and chaos across the globe, away from its main land. .
1. Wars, conflicts and crisis create direct consumption for US defense/aerospace industry. USA during last century planned thoroughly and laid the necessary groundwork for the growth of the most powerful defense/aerospace industry worth trillion dollars. As a result if we sum up today technological might of US, Defense/Aerospace industry is the back bone of US technological superiority. In Defense/Aerospace industries US firms have monopoly and do not have ant parallel/equal competitor in whole world (including G8 countries).
2. Each war/crisis is followed by construction work which is mostly done by US firms/cartels. Examples are Europe (after WW II) and Iraq reconstruction recently. Transparency international Bribe payers index 2002, ranks defence industry as the 2nd most corrupt business sector- just ahead of oil and gas sector but behind the public works and construction sectors. These all sectors are controlled and manipulated by USA.
3. Wars, crisis and violence results in enhanced public spending. During WWW I (triggered by non state agents) more than 1.2 million US soldiers were employed. Similarly during 1930/40s General Motor was on verge of collapse in the same way as today in 2008/09. Then President Roosevelt gave special orders for making engine for military tanks and aircrafts instead of cars. Same tanks and aircraft were then utilized in WWW II.
4. Each war, conflict and map redrawing have created US dependant states. Examples are Isreal, Saudi Arabia (out of Ottoman Empire after WW I). Saudi Arabia is depended on USA for last seven decades for all external and internal threats. Israel act as counter balance for US strategic interest in Middle East. Recent warming of relation and increasing closeness between India and US is direct result of the India and Pakistan escalation. As result both look toward Washington for favorable tap.
5. Wars, crisis and violence create favorable and monopolistic business/trade conditions for most of US firms and MNCs. Wars, crisis and violence create preferential monopolies over trade routes and natural resource.
6. Wars, violence and crisis also result capital flight from whole globe to US main land, which has remained safe from any war, violence and crisis during last century. Whereas US has been remained direct/indirect sponsor, initiator and actor in all such wars, violence and crisis. US has jumped in each war after some Flag post operation like Pearl Harbor (WW II) or 9/11 (War on Terror).
7. Wars, violence and crisis across the globe also pulls down complete region and act as drag on US rival and competitor economies with which US economy is unable to remain competitive and correct its own structural gaps.
8. On domestic front, wars, violence and crisis across the globe are used by Washington for attention divertion from structural flaws in US economic and financial system.
Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain in Islamabad Tonight (March 24, 2009)
Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain in Islamabad Tonight (March 24, 2009)
http://www.friendskorner.com/forum/f247/islamabad-tonight-24th-march-2009-a-102088/
-----------------------------------------------------------
N A D E E M M A L I K
Director Programme
AAJ TV
ISLAMABAD
00-92-321-5117511
nadeem.malik@hotmail.com
What can you do with the new Windows Live? Find out
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
World's Most Conscientious: Pakistani Customer
World's Most Conscientious Customer Completes Botched Software Purchase Over A Year Later
Here's an "above and beyond" story from the other perspective. Patrick writes,
I just wanted to pass along a story of a truly honest customer.
The software company I work for put out a version available for download early 2007. It was a success, however for the first two months there was a small problem. As soon as you purchased it, you were able to download it BEFORE your credit card was validated. This led to the company getting burned until it was fixed.
Back in 2007 we had a customer who tried to pay for the download in Pakistan, and then paid for it with a debit card. It was the only card payment he had, and it was rejected. He had no other forms of payment, and we had to write it off as a loss while he got to enjoy using his software for free. Whatever, it was our web engineers' mistake that caused it.
In October 2008 a letter came in the mail with a check from a customer for the Download version. Obviously this raised some questions as we could not process a download order paid by check. I opened up the file with the name on it, and lo and behold, there was the guy from Pakistan who we had written off the charge for.
I called him up, and it turns out that he just moved to the US and one of the first things he did when he had gotten a checking account was to send a check to us for the full amount of the software that we had written off over a year and a half prior.
Honesty, and memory like that is hard to find these days. I wonder if coming from another country and culture had anything to do with it.
-----------------------------------------------------------
N A D E E M M A L I K
Director Programme
AAJ TV
ISLAMABAD
00-92-321-5117511
nadeem.malik@hotmail.com
check out the rest of the Windows Live™. More than mail–Windows Live™ goes way beyond your inbox. More than messages
Zardari is 5th biggest loser in world: report
| Zardari is 5th biggest loser in world: report |
| Press Trust of India / Islamabad March 23, 2009, 14:24 IST |
"Zardari was known to be a bad guy long before he became Pakistan's President. Many of the closest friends of his late wife Benazir Bhutto could not stand him. Now, as it turns out, neither can most of the Pakistani people," read the citation by the US-based magazine.
"Locked in a bitter struggle with opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, Zardari showed his weakness by capitulating to demands to reinstate Pakistan's former Chief Justice per Sharif's demands.
Now in a desperate attempt to reassert control of his own party he may be plotting the ouster of his Prime Minister...," it said in an article on the world's 13 biggest losers.
Zardari is "on the ropes, his opposition is gaining strength, and meanwhile fraught, dangerous, complex Pakistan is hardly being governed at all", the magazine said. Foreign Policy listed 12 other leaders from this month's "headlines ranked by just how little sympathy we should have for them".
The Pope was declared the second biggest loser because "he's out of touch with the real world and his papacy is 'a disaster'", the magazine wrote.
The magazine said: "If there's one thing you've got to love about tough times is: they're tough on everyone. These days, it's not easy even for those who have taken historically proven paths to amassing wealth, fame, power, social acceptance and happiness ¿ like becoming a billionaire or Pope or US Treasury secretary or an Austrian sadist." Austrian businessman Josef Fritzl was among the losers for locking his daughter in the basement of his house and making her his sex slave.
Bernie Madoff, the US swindler who defrauded taxpayers of USD 60 billion, was also included in the list.
Others included on the Foreign Policy list are Edward Liddy, executive of US giant AIG (no 13); Forbes Billionaires List (no 12); Eliot Spitzer also of AIG (no 11); British Prime Minister Gordon Brown (no 10) and Israeli political Bibi Netahanyahu (no 9).
-----------------------------------------------------------
N A D E E M M A L I K
Director Programme
AAJ TV
ISLAMABAD
00-92-321-5117511
nadeem.malik@hotmail.com
What can you do with the new Windows Live? Find out
Monday, March 23, 2009
US embarked wars and adventures away from main land in economic recession. Please save Pakistan
US embarked wars and adventures away from main land in economic recession. Following are the few reason due to which US actively promote, initiate wars, violence, conflicts and chaos across the globe, away from its main land.
1. Wars, conflicts and crisis create direct consumption for US defense/aerospace industry. USA during last century planned thoroughly and laid the necessary groundwork for the growth of the most powerful defense/aerospace industry worth trillion dollars. As a result if we sum up today technological might of US, Defense/Aerospace industry is the back bone of US technological superiority. In Defense/Aerospace industries US firms have monopoly and do not have ant parallel/equal competitor in whole world (including G8 countries).
2. Each war/crisis is followed by construction work which is mostly done by US firms/cartels. Examples are Europe (after WW II) and Iraq reconstruction recently. Transparency international Bribe payers index 2002, ranks defence industry as the 2nd most corrupt business sector- just ahead of oil and gas sector but behind the public works and construction sectors. These all sectors are controlled and manipulated by USA.
3. Wars, crisis and violence results in enhanced public spending. During WWW I (triggered by non state agents) more than 1.2 million US soldiers were employed. Similarly during 1930/40s General Motor was on verge of collapse in the same way as today in 2008/09. Then President Roosevelt gave special orders for making engine for military tanks and aircrafts instead of cars. Same tanks and aircraft were then utilized in WWW II.
4. Each war, conflict and map redrawing have created US dependant states. Examples are Isreal, Saudi Arabia (out of Ottoman Empire after WW I) and Pakistan (Out of British Indian Colony after WW II). Saudi Arabia is depended on USA for last seven decades for all external and internal threats. Israel act as counter balance for US strategic interest in Middle East. Pakistan during its existence for last six decades is dependant on USA for military hardware and financial aid due to similar on going wars, crisis and breeding violence across its Western and Eastern borders. Recent warming of relation and increasing closeness between India and US is direct result of the India and Pakistan escalation. As result both look toward Washington for favorable tap.
5. Wars, crisis and violence create favorable and monopolistic business/trade conditions for most of US firms and MNCs. Wars, crisis and violence create preferential monopolies over trade routes and natural resource.
6. Wars, violence and crisis also result capital flight from whole globe to US main land, which has remained safe from any war, violence and crisis during last century. Whereas US has been remained direct/indirect sponsor, initiator and actor in all such wars, violence and crisis. US has jumped in each war after some Flag post operation like Pearl Harbor (WW II) or 9/11 (War on Terror).
7. Wars, violence and crisis across the globe also pulls down complete region and act as drag on US rival and competitor economies with which US economy is unable to remain competitive and correct its own structural gaps.
8. On domestic front, wars, violence and crisis across the globe are used by Washington for attention divertion from structural flaws in US economic and financial system.
Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain confronts David Miliband’s dishonest attempt to link Pakistan to 9/11
Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain confronts David Miliband's dishonest attempt to link Pakistan to 9/11
London, UK, March 23 2009 - In a lie resembling former Prime Minister Tony Blair's infamous 45 minute claim that was used to secure backing for the brutal invasion and occupation of Iraq, the British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said on the 20th March 2009 on BBC Radio 4 that "The reason that we're in Afghanistan is precisely because 9/11 was launched from the borderlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan". Mr Miliband made the extraordinary comments in response to the allegation that it was the presence of occupying troops which was provoking the insurgency in Afghanistan.
Responding to these warmongering statements, Taji Mustafa, media representative of Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain said, "In the eight years since 9/11, no one suggested that Pakistan was linked to that event. Lately however, Pakistan has increasingly become the target of propaganda, transformed from prime ally to prime suspect in a manner reminiscent of the build up to the Iraq war when Western politicians fabricated evidence and misled the general public in their attempt to make the case for war."
"Miliband's comments mark an escalation as the British government continues to try to project Pakistan as a failed state in need of British and American intervention. The intervention of these capitalist colonialist states is the last thing Pakistan needs. These Western states have been nothing but a force for division and conflict in Pakistan, just as they have for Palestine and Iraq."
"Moreover, Hizb ut-Tahrir asks why not one senior politician or diplomat from Pakistan has condemned this serious slur against the good name of the people of Pakistan - not Zardari, not the Sharif brothers, nor the High Commissioner to the UK, Mr Wajid Shamsul Hassan, who acts more like a spokesman for the PPP than a serious diplomat."
"Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain will continue to expose this shameless propaganda against the good name of the people of Pakistan. Furthermore, we will continue to call the Muslim community in Britain to join us in this campaign and join the growing call for the Khilafah across the Muslim world."
[End]
CONTACT:
Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain
+44(0)7074-192400
press@hizb.org.uk
www.hizb.org.uk
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Sunday, March 22, 2009
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US Foriegn policy is Imperial policy : Al-Qaeda/OBL gives full marks to Bush
Friday, March 20, 2009
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Thursday, March 19, 2009
Sanam Bhutto on Asif Ali Zardari---Daphne Barak
| The only people I care for in Pakistan are dead, says Sanam Bhutto |
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|
|
Thursday, March 19, 2009 By Daphne Barak " I don't care about HIM, about anybody in Pakistan. There is no one person I would call right now...Everybody I care about is dead." These were the words of an extremely bitter Sanam Bhutto on Sunday afternoon. I was shocked so I repeated once again how bad the political situation under controversial president Asif Ali Zardari is. I briefly told her the trouble is escalating by the minute and may turn into bloodshed. This didn't change the uncaring manner of Sanam Bhutto. She simply reiterated that the only people she would care to help are dead. Sanam is the assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto's sister. Her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, two brothers and eldest sister Benazir have all been killed. She lives in London with her children, after an abusive marriage; according to her ("I married him because I wanted to escape life in Pakistan. It has become a nightmare: life with him, separation from him"). Benazir had introduced me to her younger sister Sanam in New York. We reconnected after Benazir was murdered. I told Asif, who was running the election campaign in her place that I wanted to see Sanam. Although Sanam told me later on, that "I don't have any relationship with HIM. I don't even have his private phone..." - Sanam's emotional first ever TV interview with me, mourning Benazir and the rest of her legendary family, revived the emotion right after Benazir's assassination on December 27, 2007. I chose to air it and print it worldwide just because Pakistanís elections which were postponed by the then president Pervez Musharraf because of Benazir's assassination. Asif who has been one of the most reviled politicians in Pakistan, nicknamed "Mr. 10 per cent" and was relying on the support of his assassinated wifeís memory. He was scared that this emotional support would be less overwhelming in the postponed elections that Musharraf had smartly initiated. My worldwide interview with Sanam was part of my "spin" to correct that and help my friend's widower who told me he believed in democracy and the freedom of the press and wished to be elected and continue what Benazir had hoped to achieve by returning to Pakistan. Musharraf acknowledged the importance of Sanam Bhutto's interview as a major factor in Asif's victory in the elections of February 2008, when we met recently in London. Many others did too. However, Sanam Bhutto has not been treated like a political asset to say the least. She told me that she was struggling financially and, "my brother-in-law is doing nothing to help me.î She added that ì Benazir helped me with my children's education." In fact, when she went for a beauty treatment, she used to go with Benazir, she was so nervous when they asked for her credit card. When I took the trembling Sanam to dinner afterwards, she told me: "Daphne, I was so nervous when they asked for my credit card. I thought it will not go through. I was scared, I would have to ask you to loan me money immediately..." Sanam made an appearance at Benazir's birthday in Pakistan, and the swearing-in ceremony of Asif Ali Zardari as president. She had showed up with Bilawal and Benazir's two daughters. But behind all that she was forced to remain distant from Benazir's kids. She had been a very involved aunt, almost a mother figure up until then. I have witnessed her close relationship with Bilawal after Benazir's death. That is why I almost hit the roof when Bilawal emailed me in April 2008 saying that, "I hardly see Sanam any more..." Sanam who rarely talks about politics lost it after an emotional dinner with Bilawal, myself and my producer Erbil. On our way back from dinner, Sanam's anger came out: "I will never forgive HIM. Why is he taking over the party? Let democracy happen. Let the people in the PPP decide who will be the leader. He always criticised my sister that she did not have the right people around her, that she does not know... that he knows better... She was working so hard. He always criticised her... She wanted so much to spend time with him. He always preferred to spend time with his friends. And she tried so much to please him... So now, let us see what he can do. Whether he can do any better..." I chose not to use angry words which were repeated more than on one occasion. I wasn't sure if Sanam wanted her real opinion and pain to surface. But her blunt statement, earlier today, spoke volumes. |
-----------------------------------------------------------
N A D E E M M A L I K
Director Programme
AAJ TV
ISLAMABAD
00-92-321-5117511
nadeem.malik@hotmail.com
What can you do with the new Windows Live? Find out
5 Minutes over Islamabad Written back in 2005
By A.H Amin
ccun.org, September 27, 2007
There appears to be a strong evolving consensus in the USA as well as
its NATO allies that Pakistan is the centre of gravity of the
Islamists in the ongoing so called "war on terror." This idea gained
currency in various high US policy making circles as well as think
tanks around 1987-89 and then assumed a solid shape in the decade
1990-2000.After 2001, it was adopted as a policy and concrete albeit
top secret planning was started to deal with Pakistan which at the
ulterior level was seen as part of the problem rather than a solution.
When the Spaniards landed in Mexico, their main collaborators were
indigenous Mexicans themselves ! In Pakistan also the USA made use of
indigenous collaborators ! Generals whose sons had US passports !
Bankers who were US nationals but also dual Pakistani citizens ! Thus,
these leaders justified collaboration with the USA after 9/11 on the
grounds that what they did was the only guarantee for the survival of
Pakistan !
The Pakistani military junta in 2001 was isolated internationally, so
it was very easy for the USA to overawe it with one telephone call !
The typical career army officer's life consists of aiming to get a
good annual report from his boss ! Pakistan's military leadership
grasped this opportunity to get a good pat from their geopolitical
strategic boss, the US president, and with open hands provided
airbases and all logistical support to the USA ! This was a short term
measure so that Pakistani military junta's survival in power was
ensured ! It had no connection with survival of Pakistan as a state !
Compare how Iran is surviving as a state despite defying the USA since
1979 ! Later on a fiction that USA threatened Pakistan with bombing it
to the stone age was invented ! Thus irresolution was rationalized as
supreme strategic brilliance ! Ironically some so called media men who
are also running private businesses were in the forefront in praising
this strategic timidity as strategic brilliance !
What happened in " Real Strategic Terms" was that with Pakistani
military junta's active collaboration i.e. logistical support and air
bases the USA was able to occupy Afghanistan very cheaply and with
minimum casualties ! This was no mean strategic achievement as it
placed the USA right below the soft underbelly of China as well as
Russia ! More significantly it reduced the flying as well as striking
time to the Pakistani nuclear as well as missile installation. Close
proximity to Pakistan also enabled the USA to conduct intelligence
operations inside Pakistan in a far more optimum manner than ever
before.
It was theorized in secret sessions of the highest level US decision
making circles that although the Islamists fighting the USA had no
fixed centre of gravity which could be attacked and eliminated,
Pakistan with its sympathetic pro Islamist populace and nuclear and
missile assets was at least a provisional centre of gravity of the
Islamists. Note that US feared , not the ISI , not the tinpot
Pakistani military junta , but the sentiments of the vast bulk of the
Pakistani populace and its arsenal of nuclear warheads and missiles !
Thus, Afghanistan was seen as a potential US base to carry out a 5
minutes over Islamabad or Kahuta just like the Israelis with US
cooperation destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor in 5 minutes over Baghdad
in 1981.
In 1945 the USA had bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki not for any direct
military purpose but to overawe the USSR that no one could match US
military might. The USSR had faced the challenge and developed a fine
nuclear arsenal to counter US aspirations to control the world. Later,
China also emerged as another challenger of USA ! Thanks to USSR help,
many South Asian countries as well as African countries fought and won
wars of liberation ! The Arabs were able to confront Israel only
because of Soviet aid till the collaborator Sadat sold his soul to the
USA and Israel !
The USA was all set to reduce Pakistan to size in 1977 when it
financed the anti Bhutto agitation in 1977 ! This plan was delayed
because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan from 1979 till 1989 when
the USA had but no option other than using Pakistan as a base for
assisting the anti-Soviet War in Afghanistan.
Change of posture came very quickly when after 1990 the USA started
talking that Pakistan is a terrorist state or was on the brink of
being a terrorist state. This was basically a war of nerves the
decisive point of which was one telephone call which made Pakistan's
tinpot military junta take the so called " brilliant strategic
decision" of collaborating with the USA !
After the disintegration of the USSR , strategically speaking the US
military targets were the littoral states of the Indian Ocean .Thus
the Iraq War of 1990 , the Invasion and capture of Iraq of 2003 and
the invasion of capture of Afghanistan in 2001.
Interestingly Iraq and Afghanistan were not ultimate objectives of US
onslaught but merely initial bridgeheads. This was only Phase One !
Phase Two may include Pakistan and Phase Three may include Iran !
Phase Four being Chinese Singkiang and/or Central Asian Republics !
Somewhere the Americans call it Orange Revolution whose first good
example was the anti-Bhutto agitation that they financed in 1977 in
Pakistan ! Sometimes they call it a war on terror or war against
weapons of mass destruction !
History has proved that generals fail as statesmen ! In 1936 all of
Hitler's generals opposed his decision to march into Rhineland ! This
is so because generals think only in tangible terms ! They do not
appreciate the value of intangible factors like resolution etc ! Thus
after 9/11 when Pakistan's tinpot junta wargamed being invaded by USA
it only thought in military terms ! It failed to appreciate that the
USA was humbled in Vietnam and in Iran in 1979 ! In the process they
allowed and facilitated the USA to occupy Afghanistan in very cheap
military terms ! Pakistan shall pay a heavy price for this ! Whether
Armitage said it or not , the USA will bomb some parts of Pakistan to
the stone age in order to denuclearize Pakistan.
Pakistan is in a strange strategic situation ! It is led by a military
dictator whose sole aim is to stay in power ! Its number two the so
called prime minister is a US citizen and in case he dies naturally or
unnaturally his successor i.e. the Chairman Senate is also a US
citizen ! So politically the USA is dominant in Pakistan ! But this
does not make the Americans happy ! Their aim is denuclearization and
complete submission of Pakistan !
Imagine the following scenario ! Pakistan's military dictator is
killed in a mysterious air crash or assassinated by a common soldier
on duty like Indira Gandhi ! The USA immediately issues an ultimatum
that it fears that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal may fall in the hands of
extremists ! A surgical nuclear strike is launched on Kahuta and
Islamabad !Another general takes over power in Pakistan and
capitulates to all US demands dismantling the Pakistani nuclear
arsenal and its missiles ! Rationalising this on the ground that if he
did not do so the USA would bomb Pakistan to stone age ! In next ten
years Pakistan is Balkanised with an independent US supported
Baluchistan and an independent puppet Pashtun state in NWFP and
Northern Pashtun majority districts of Baluchistan ! An independent
Sindh in the South , an independent Kashmir and Northern Areas with US
bases for future operations against Singkiang on the Deosai Plateau
and only Punjab left as Pakistan ! No nukes , no missiles , no resolve
! Just like the Christians reduced the Muslims to Granada in Spain and
finally eliminated even Granada in 1492.
This is not a pessimistic view of things but a hard strategic reality
! The writing is clear on the wall ! Airfields are being developed,
not against the Taliban or against the Al-Qaeda but for 5 minutes over
Islamabad !
In strategy everything moves very slowly and it is the greatness of a
statesman and military commander to assess what will happen in next 5
or ten years ! Here in Pakistan we have a situation where our military
leaders are overawed by just one phone call ! From leaders of such a
caliber little resolution or strategic insight can be expected !
From 1979 to 1988 Pakistan's military junta after seizing power
through the backdoor , provided the USA with an active base to
destabilize and destroy Afghanistan's de facto government . All
infrastructure of Afghanistan was destroyed as well as all its
institutions between 1979 and 1992 .Now if the Afghan state allows the
USA to do so it should not be a surprise ! And why did Pakistan's
military junta of 1977-88 support the so called Afghan Jihad ! So that
General Zia stays in power ! The characters were different in 1979 and
2001 , but the motivation was the same !
Someone may skeptically view the above presented scenario ! The
following arguments support the presented scenario ! If Saddam was
destroyed on the mere suspicion that Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass
Destruction why is Pakistan not a perfectly legitimate target for USA
, because it is a Muslim country and possesses WMD without any doubt !
Saddam was more secular than any Muslim leader in modern history yet
his country and he himself were targeted and destroyed ! What is the
aim of this so called enlightened Islam espoused by Musharraf ! To act
as anesthesia for USA and destroy all resistance power of the
Pakistani nation ! If not strategic brilliance at least we have good
anesthetists at the top ! In war surprise is the key so the USA will
not politely announce its intentions before it reduces Pakistan to
size ! Musharraf , Benazir and any other general that may emerge are
merely pawns in the game which can be removed by air crashes or
assassinations ! Waziristan , Al-Qaeda and terrorism are merely hollow
slogans ! The Pakistan Army is being forced into Waziristan by the USA
not to attack the Al-Qaeda but to create an internal divide in
Pakistan ! There have been many cases of desertion of soldiers in
units in Waziristan as well as cases of refusal of officers for
carrying out duties seen as against their conscience ! What can be
expected from leaders whose sons are US citizens or who consider USA
safer for their families to live than Pakistan ! What can be expected
from US citizens now enjoying high political office in Pakistan after
having a good time in Bank of America or CITI Bank ! What respect will
the army jawans have for leaders more distinguished for deciding not
to fight a battle after one telephone call or more interested in
privatizing the PSO , PTCL or the Steel Mill !
5 Minutes over Islamabad is a distinct possibility ! This is the irony
of a nation who supplied many pilots who were blood brothers of
Syrian, Iraqis and Jordanians in downing many Israeli aircrafts over
Golan , Amman and Iraq ! Today the Pakistani leaders are practicing
sycophancy with Israel to gain a good pat from USA !
The conclusion is that Pakistan is led by collaborators who will go to
any extent to survive while its nuclear and military assets would be
destroyed with partial or active cooperation of its own leaders ! Fear
made men believe in the worst but here in Pakistan we have a scenario
in which Pakistan's leaders are trying to sell the idea that timid
strategic collaboration is strategic brilliance ! A secret clause of
Vision 2030 propaganda of Pakistani sitting leadership is that by 2030
Pakistan would be a Balkanised state with no nuclear and missile
assets and kicked by all its neighbours ! Good luck to vision 2030 !
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Wild West, Violence, Muslims & Taliban : Violence is the American Way By Ira Leonard
Violence/intolerance in on rise globally and particularly in Muslim Societies. It has been a Fashion for corrupt ruling westernized intelligencia of the various Muslim societies (MACAULAY'S CHILDREN/BROWN GORAS) to label poor Taliban/Mullah as source of all violence and intolerance in our societies in order to cover their failures, misdeeds and corruption spanning over decades. Taliban/Mullah is our society internal state of instability/unrest/rebellion (emotional /academic /cultural/ legal/ political) against Western hegemony for last two centuries. While our past/present ruling westernized intelligencia is force of status quo and external state imposed on our societies through violence, deprivation and exploitations. Talibans/Mullahs are mostly from poor masses and represent a reactive force and agent of change against status quo, violence, deprivation and exploitation. While westernized intelligencia forms the ruling lot and represent statues que for their unquestioned control over all resources/authority of the various Muslim societies/states.
Muslim societies in general and Pakistan in particular are composed of deprived/exploited masses ruled and controlled by few elite coordinating in form of pressure groups through various tools of violence gifted to them by their western Masters. Westernized intelligencias of the various Muslim societies (MACAULAY'S CHILDREN/BROWN GORAS) are privileged in all walks of life whether Politics, Business, Bureaucracy, Uniform, Media name any institution. These pressure groups have hijacked the whole Muslim societies/country for their own interest in name of Moderation/Enlightenment/Freedom/Democracy. These elite were ruling once Capitalist's and Business Minded GORA (West) were here and now also when we are free. It is excellent convergence of interest of our ruling elite and the greatest exploiter of the world known history through violence i.e. Capitalist West.
Wild/Violent West empowered few families and minorities were made more and more powerful. It must sound strange but history has either been written by West, collaborators or their followers. Those who were/are loyal to West/East India Company were/are made stronger and stronger. As result in most of the Muslim countries minority has been imposed over majority thus systematically blocking path for any emergence for real Leadership/Development. Yet, it is seldom accorded any serious attention by our sick academics, media commentators, and political leaders.
Very few in our society dare to speak truth. Fewer dare to listen to the truth. Much fewer who accept truth and much smaller in number who act on truth. We as nation are reactive mob, which lack systematic or analytical approach, because we all are groomed through skewed wisdom/vision during our education spanning over 20 years. We as nation do not hate fire but the ONE who shout FIRE. We are not afraid of failure rather afraid only to accept ourselves as failure even if we are fail. We as a nation are failed in all field. Starting from education, medicine, engineering, banking, politics, science. You name any field and we are total failure. While Westernized elite (MACAULAY'S CHILDREN/BROWN GORAS) are ruling us for past many decades they have so called fabricated excuses and fallacies of their total failure. Namely Education, Mullah, Defence, Taliban, Sectarianism, India, etc
We lack systematic/analytical power, because we all are groomed through skewed wisdom/vision therefore for us Islam/Quran seems irrelevant in all our problems. Though our Western educated elite, analyst, commentators will avoid to attack Quran/Sunnah directly but will always attack whoever, in one way or other represent/talk rule of Quran and Sunnah. For past 100 years, we've waited for "someone from our western style Schools/Colleges/Universities, SO-CALLED SEAT OF LEARNING" to do a miracle. But alas it is DISGUSTING TOTAL FAILURE for more than 100 years in all fields and it will be failure for next 1000 years.
To what extent West or US will benefit us? Western Empire and especially US is violent and growing wild/violent day by day for commercial reasons. West especially US Imperialism have been the most violent force in the world history over the last two centuries, carving up whole globe. In the present unilateral world the source of violence in not Taliban/Mullah rather they are simple reactive forces. Please read a wonderful article by Ira Leonard who tries to uncover the invisible violence in US nature, which is considered as a mark of excellence by our Western educated lot. If his article is 25 % based on fact, with any doubt West/US seem to be an evil empire and source of all ills and violence in world. It should be an eye opener for all of us who follow/cherish/idealize/value/worship US/West and their systems.
FM Shah
Violence is the American Way By Ira Leonard
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17195.htm
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17195.htm
"Increasingly, Americans are a people without history, with only memory, which means a people poorly prepared for what is inevitable about life -- tragedy, sadness, moral ambiguity -- and therefore a people reluctant to engage difficult ethical issues." - --
Elliot Gorn, "Professing History: Distinguishing Between Memory and Past,"
Chronicle of Higher Education (April 28, 2000).
04/23/03 -- -- In August 2002, President George Bush began to drum up a war fever in America with a view to toppling Iraqi Dictator Saddam Hussein, alleged to be the possessor of weapons of mass destruction. Bush did so without providing the evidence, the costs, the "why now" explanation, or long-term implications of such a war.
And by October 2002, The United States Congress not only granted the president a virtual declaration of war for an historically unprecedented "pre-emptive war," but did so without raising any questions about the whys, the evidence, the costs, or long term implications for the nation -- and for the world -- of such an unprovoked invasion.
Only a democratic society accustomed to war -- and predisposed to the use of war and violence -- would accept war so quickly, without asking any questions or demanding any answers from its leaders about the war.
And only the opposition of the French, Germans, Russians, and Chinese finally forced some Americans to raise questions about what was actually being planned. This, coupled with the anti-war demonstrations on February 15th, 2003 by millions of people in 350 cities around the globe, delayed President Bush from actually launching this war against Iraq by mid-February 2003.
Nothing, however, seemed to stop the bush administration's drive for war. Nor did the failure of American diplomatic efforts to get authorization from the United Nations' security council seem to bother the members of the congress, virtually all of whom remained silent or in support of war. The incessant polls showed that a majority of the american population continued to support a preemptive war even as -- or perhaps because of -- increasingly angry objections were voiced by important longterm allies and antiwar demonstrators all over the world.
The reality untaught in American schools and textbooks is that war -- whether on a large or small scale -- and domestic violence have been pervasive in American life and culture from this country's earliest days almost 400 years ago. Violence, in varying forms, according to the leading historian of the subject, Richard Maxwell Brown, "has accompanied virtually every stage and aspect of our national experience," and is "part of our unacknowledged (underground) value structure." Indeed, "repeated episodes of violence going far back into our colonial past, have imprinted upon our citizens a propensity to violence."
Thus, America demonstrated a national predilection for war and domestic violence long before the 9/11 attacks, but its leaders and intellectuals through most of the last century cultivated the national self-image, a myth, of America as a moral, "peace-loving" nation which the American population seems unquestioningly to have embraced.
Despite the national, peace-loving self-image, American patriotism has usually been expressed in military and even militaristic terms. No less than seven presidents owed their election chiefly to their military careers (George Washington, 1789, Andrew Jackson,1828, William Henry Harrison, 1840, Zachary Taylor,1848, Ulysses S. Grant,1868, Theodore Roosevelt,1898, and Dwight David Eisenhower, 1952) while others, Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy, for example, capitalized upon their military records to become presidents, and countless others at both federal and state levels made a great deal of their war or military records.
Starting with President Woodrow Wilson early in the 20th century, national leaders began to use moralistic rhetoric when they took the nation to war. They assured Americans that the nation's singular mission in the world required the nation to go to war, but that when it went to war, America only did what was morally right.
Secretary of State John Hay, in 1898, lauded the Spanish-American War as a "splendid little war." Commentators have touted World War II as the good war and those who fought in it, "The Best American Generation," and President George Bush, as he was about to launch a War against Iraq on January 29, 1991, asserted: "We are Americans; we have a unique responsibility to do the hard work of freedom. And when we do, freedom works."
This is not to suggest that all American wars have been fought for base motives, cloaked by self-serving moralistic rhetoric, but rather that Americans have little genuine understanding of the major role played by war throughout the American experience.
Historians, however, are well aware that war taught Americans how to fight, helped unite the diverse American population, and helped stimulate the national economy, among other significant things. But this is not the message that they have presented to the American people, concerned perhaps they might undermine Americans' self-image.
Just how frequent war has been, and how central wars have been to the evolution of the United States, only becomes clear when you start to make a list.
American wars begin with the first Indian attack in 1622 in Jamestown, Virginia, followed by the Pequot War in New England in 1635-36, and King Philips' War, in 1675-76, which resulted in the destruction of almost half the towns in Massachusetts. Other wars and skirmishes with Native American Indians would follow until 1900.
There were four major imperial wars between 1689 and 1763 involving England and its North American colonies and the French (and their Native American Indian allies), Spanish, and Dutch empires. During roughly the same years, 1641 to 1759, there were 18 settler outbreaks, five rising to the level of major insurrections (such as Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia, 1676-1677, Leisler's Rebellion in New York, 1689-1692, and Coode's Rebellion in Maryland, 1689-1692), and 40 riots.
Americans gained their independence from England and boundaries out to the Mississippi River, as a consequence of the Revolutionary War.
The second war against England, 1812-1815, reinforced our independence, while 40 wars with the Native American Indians between the 1622 and 1900 resulted in millions upon millions of acres of land being added to the national domain.
In 1848, the entire southwest, including California, Arizona, New Mexico, and parts of Utah and Wyoming, was obtained through war with Mexico. The Civil War between 1861 and 1865 was simply the bloodiest war in American history.
America's overseas empire began with the Spanish-American War and Philippine Insurrection (1898-1902) by which the U.S. gained control of the Philippines, Cuba and Puerto Rico.
Then, there were World Wars I and II, the Korean Police Action (1949 - 1952), and the longest -- and most expensive war -- in American history, the Vietnam War between 1959 and 1975.
Meanwhile, between 1789 and 1945, there were at least 200 presidentially directed military actions all over the globe. Among other places, these military actions involved the shelling of Indochina in 1849 and the U.S. military occupation of virtually every Caribbean and Central-American country between 1904 and 1934. Indeed, in his effort to justify U.S. military intervention in Cuba against Fidel Castro, on September 17, 1962, Secretary of State Dean Rusk presented a list to a U.S. Senate Hearing of all of these 200 plus "precedents" (now called "low intensity conflicts") from 1789 to 1960.
During the Cold War between 1945 and 1989, the U.S. waged war, directly or through surrogates, openly and covertly, from military bases all over the world.
After the Cold War ended in 1989, other important military actions have been undertaken, such as the Gulf War (January and February 1991 in Iraq), in the former Yugoslavia (in 1999), and the 2001 war against the Taliban government and international terrorists in Afghanistan and the Philippines in 2003. To this roster, we must add the 2003 war against Iraq, to be followed, perhaps, by one with North Korea, which has lately brandished its nuclear weapons and missiles.
American historians have avidly studied war, especially the Civil War and World War II, but their focus has almost always been on war causation, battles, generalship, battlefield tactics and strategy, and so on. Overlooked, for the most part, are the general and specific effects of war upon American cultural life; the possible connections between war and civilian violence is still largely unexplored territory. Has war directly or indirectly encouraged an American predisposition toward aggressiveness and the use of violence or was it the reverse?
This question has never been satisfactorily investigated by American historians or other scholars. Yet, the overwhelming majority of historians have always known that America was -- and is -- a violent country. But they have said very little about it, depriving the population of a realistic understanding about this important aspect of their national culture. This omission is most clearly observable in U.S. history textbooks used in high schools, colleges and universities, on the one hand, and popular histories derived from these texts, on the other, which have never devoted serious attention to the topic of the violence in America, let alone sought to explain it.
Consequently, there seems little genuine understanding about the centrality of violence in American life and history.
The overwhelming majority of American historians have not studied, written about, or discussed America's "high violence" environment, not because of a lack of hard information or knowledge about the frequent and widespread use of violence, but because of an unwillingness to confront the reality that violence and American culture are inextricably intertwined.
Many prominent historians recognized this years ago.
In the introduction to his 1970 collection of primary documents, "American Violence: A Documentary History," two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Richard Hofstadter wrote: "What is impressive to one who begins to learn about American violence is its extraordinary frequency, its sheer commonplaceness in our history, its persistence into very recent and contemporary times, and its rather abrupt contrast with our pretensions to singular national virtue." Indeed, Hofstadter wrote the "legacy" of the violent 1960s would be a commitment by historians systematically to study American violence.
But most American historians have studiously avoided the topic or somehow clouded the issue. In 1993, in his magisterial study, "The History of Crime and Punishment in America," for example, Stanford University Historian Lawrence Friedman devoted a chapter to the many forms of American violence. Then, in a very revealing chapter conclusion, Friedman wrote: "American violence must come from somewhere deep in the American personality ... [it] cannot be accidental; nor can it be genetic. The specific facts of American life made it what it is ... crime has been perhaps a part of the price of liberty ... [but] American violence is still a historical puzzle." Precisely what is it that historians are unwilling to discuss? Basically, there are three forms of American violence: mob violence, interpersonal violence, and war.
What is the extent of mob violence?
Indiana University Historian Paul Gilje, in his 1997 book, "Rioting in America," stated there were at least 4,000 riots between the early 1600s and 1992. Gilje asserted that "without an understanding of the impact of rioting we cannot fully comprehend the history of the American people."
This is a position that director Martin Scorsese just made his own in the film, "Gangs of New York," which focuses on the July 1863 Draft Act Riots in New York City as the historical pivot around which America's urban experience revolved. However, occasional gory movie depictions of violent riots, or Civil War battles, as in "Gods and Generals," provide little real understanding of a nation's history.
M.I.T. Historian Robert Fogelson, in his 1971 book, "Violence as Protest: a Study of Riots and Ghettos," concluded that "for three and a half centuries Americans have resorted to violence in order to reach goals otherwise unattainable ... indeed, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the native white majority has rioted in some way and at some time against every minority group in America and yet Americans regard rioting not only as illegitimate but, even more significant, as aberrant."
Part of the fascination with group violence is the spectacle of mob rampages. But for historians there is more; group violence is viewed as a "response" to changing economic, political, social, cultural, demographic or religious conditions. Thus, however violent the episodes were, historians could see larger "reasons" for these group behaviors; somehow, these actions reflected a "cause."
(This might be likened to the way many American historians still view the southern secession movement and Civil War. Seeking to maintain their institution of human slavery, southerners started the bloodiest war in American history which almost destroyed the union. But because they claimed to be fighting for their "freedom," historians have treated their action as a legitimate cause, whereas in other nations such action is ordinarily viewed as treason).
Now, to the nitty-gritty: How many victims did riots and collective violence claim over the 400-year American historical experience?
This can never accurately be known, considering it includes official and unofficial violence against Native American Indians, African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Asians and untold riots, vigilante actions and lynchings, among other things.
But a conservative guesstimate of, perhaps, about 2,000,000 deaths and serious injuries between 1607 and 2001 (or about 5,063 each and every year for 395 years) seems a reasonable -- and quite conservative -- number for analytical purposes, until more precise statistics are available.
At least 753,000 Native American Indians were the intended victims of warfare and genocide between 1622 and 1900 in what is now the United States of America, according to one scholar. The number for African-Americans might equal or exceed the estimate for the Indians, 750,000.
The total number of deaths for all other forms of collective violence seems well under 20,000. The greatest American riot, the New York City Draft Act riots of July 1863, resulted in between 105 and 150 deaths, while the major 1960s riots (Watts, Los Angeles, Newark, N.J., and Detroit, Mich., accounted for a total of 103 deaths, and the 1992 Los Angeles riot claimed 60 lives. The estimate of deaths from the 326 vigilante episodes is between 750 and 1,000. Approximately 5,000 individuals were known to have been lynched between 1882 and 1968, and about 2,000 more killed in labor-management violence.
Horrendous as this sounds -- and it is horrendous -- this 2,000,000 figure pales when compared to the major form of American violence which historians have routinely ignored until very recently. Historians of violence have largely ignored individual interpersonal violence, which, in sharp contrast to group violence, is very frequent, sometimes very personal -- and far deadlier than group violence.
In 1997, two distinguished legal scholars, Franklin Zimring and Gordon Hawkins, compared crime rates in the G-7 countries (Canada, England, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States) between the 1960s and 1990s in their book, "Crime Is Not The Problem: Lethal Violence In America Is." Bluntly, they stated their conclusion: "What is striking about the quantity of lethal violence in the United States is that it is a third-world phenomenon occurring in a first-world nation."
Instances of personal violence include but are not limited to barroom brawls, quarrels between acquaintances, business associates, lovers or sexual rivals, family members, or during the commission of a robbery, mugging, or other crime.
How does the carnage in this category contrast with the 2,000,000 victims of group violence between 1607 and 2001?
During the 20th century alone, well over 10 million Americans were victims of violent crimes -- and 10 percent of them -- or 1,089,616 -- were murdered between 1900 and 1997. The "total" number of "officially reported" homicides, aggravated assaults, robberies and rapes between 1937 and 1970 was 9,816,646, but these were undercounts!
Every year during the 20th century at least 10 percent of the crimes committed have been violent crimes -- homicides, aggravated assaults, forcible rapes and robberies. Between 1900 and 1997, there were 1,089,616 homicides. How were they murdered? 375,350 by firearms and the rest were due to other means, including beating, strangling, stabbing and cutting, drowning, poisoning, burning and axing.
Between 1900 and 1971, 596,984 Americans were murdered. Between 1971 and 1997, there were another 592,616 killed in similar ways.
More Americans were killed by other Americans during the 20th century than died in the Spanish-American war (11,000 "deaths in service"), World War I (116,000 "deaths in service"), World War II (406,000 "deaths in service"), the Korean police action (55,000 "deaths in service"), and the Vietnam War (109,000 "deaths in service") combined. ("Deaths in Service" statistics are greater than combat deaths and were used here to make the contrast between war and civilian interpersonal violence rates even clearer.)
So, what accounts for the American ability to overlook collective violence, interpersonal violence, and war?
The explanation lies, first, with historians' abdication of responsibility systematically to deal with the issue of violence in America ... and, second, with the American population's refusal directly to confront any very ugly reality -- which came first I do not know. This is what historians refer to as " mutual causation."
There are, of course, several factors that have enabled Americans to overlook their violent past. Many of these were actually defined by Richard Hofstadter in his 1970 introduction to "American Violence: A Documentary History." First, Americans have been told by historians that they are a "latter-day chosen people" with a providential exemption from the woes that plagued all other human societies. Historians of the 1950s had not denied that America's past was replete with violence; they just preferred during the Cold War to emphasize a more positive vision of America. Historians refer to this as the "myth of innocence" or the "myth of the new world Eden."
In an open, free, democratic society, graced with an abundance of natural resources, and without the residue of repressive European institutions, virtually any white person who worked hard had the opportunity to achieve the "American Dream" of material success and respectability.
Violence, especially political violence when it erupted, was dismissed out of hand as somehow "un-American," an unfortunate by-product of temporary racial, ethnic, religious and industrial conflicts.
Second, American violence had not been a major issue for federal, state or local officials because it was rarely directed against them; it was rarely revolutionary violence. Rather, American violence has almost always been citizen-against-citizen, white against black, white against Indian, Protestant against Catholic or Mormon, Catholic against Protestant, white against Asian or Hispanic.
The lack of a violent revolutionary tradition in America is the principal reason why Americans have never been disarmed, while in every European nation the reverse is true.
So, for the most part, Americans, laymen and historians alike, have been able to practice what some historians have termed "selective" recollection or "historical amnesia" about the violence in their past and present. Since the 1960s, historians' works, cumulatively, have demonstrated a causal connection between American culture and the American predisposition to use violence. We might now be experiencing yet another by-product of this national penchant for violence -- a willingness to engage in a major war without asking very many hard questions. It's the American Way.
Ira M. Leonard has been a professor of history at Southern Connecticut State University for over 30 years. This article is adapted from a speech presented to the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences in January 2003.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Unveiling the Mystery of Balochistan Insurgency
An interview with two ex-KGB Operatives and veterans of the Russia-Afghan War who were tasked to forment trouble in Pakistan. They make some stunning yet unsurprising revelations on the history and extent of the involvement of foreign agencies including R&AW and CIA in creating and reviving the so called 'Balochistan Insurgency', and what the Pakistanis must do to ensure their country is not torn apart.
Question: From your comments it appears that Balach and Mengal are heading the resurrected BLA and the BLA has been revived by the Americans and Russians to create trouble in Balochistan but could you give us any coherent reasons for going to such great lengths for disturbing Pakistan that is supposed to be a frontline ally of the United States on its war against terrorism?
Misha and Sasha (Ex KGB operatives and the architects of the original BLA): [Misha laughed so hard that tears came to his eyes while Sasha merely kept smiling in an absentminded way] - Frontline ally? Are you kidding? Americans are using Pakistan and Pakistanis would soon find it out if they have not already. Americans don't need that kind of allies and they have made it abundantly clear for anyone who can read their policy goals correctly.. Let them deal with Iran and you would see. If there can be any desirable American ally in that region, that is Iran - Iran under a different regime, and they are working to that end. Except for Balochistan, the rest of Pakistan is useless for them.
Deception and treachery; Live and let die. The ultimate zero sum game. Repetition of bloody history: Call it what you may, something is happening in the Pakistani province of Balochistan that defies comprehension on any conventional scale.
Four correspondents and dozens of associates who collectively logged more than 5000 kilometers during the past seven weeks in pursuit of a single question - What is actually happening in Balochistan? - have only been able to uncover small parts of the entire conspiracy.
However, if the parts have any proportional resemblance to the whole, it is a frightening and mind-boggling picture.
Every story must start somewhere. This story should conveniently have started on the night of 7 January 2005 when gas installations at Sui were rocketed and much of Pakistan came to almost grinding halt for about a week. Or, we should have taken the night of 2 January 2005 as the starting point when an unfortunate female doctor was reportedly gang-raped in Sui. However, the appropriate point to peg this story is January 2002 and we shall return to it in a minute.
Actually, the elements for the start of militancy and rebellion in Balochistan had been put in place already and the planners were waiting for a convenient catalyst to set things in motion. The gang-rape of 2 Jan, around which this sticky situation has been built, was just the missing ingredient the planners needed.
Two former KGB officers explained that the whole phenomenon has been assembled on skilful manipulation of circumstances. We shall keep returning to their comments throughout this report.
As Pakistan and India continue to mend fences, as Iran, Pakistan and India try to pool efforts to put a shared gas pipeline, as Pakistan, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan join hands to lay a natural gas pipeline of great economic and strategic importance, as the United States continues to laud the role of Pakistan as a frontline nation in war against terrorism, as Chinese contractors forge ahead with construction work in Gwadar port and on trans-Balochistan highway, as the Pakistan government makes efforts to bring Balochistan under the rule of law and eliminate safe havens for Saboteurs, arms smugglers and drug barons, as the whole region tries to develop new long-term models to curb terrorism and bring prosperity to far flung areas, there is a deadly game going on in the barren and hostile hills of Balochistan. Lines are muddy; there are no clear-cut sectors to distinguish friends from foes.
Right in the beginning we would like to clarify that when we say Indians, we mean some Indians and not the Indian government because we don't have any way of ascertaining whether the activities of some Indian nationals in Pakistan represent the official policy of their government or is it merely the adventurism of some individuals or organizations. When we say Iranians or Afghans, we mean just that: Some Iranians or Afghans. We don't even know whether the Iranian and Afghan players in Balochistan are trying to serve the interests of their countries or whether their loyalties lie elsewhere.
But - and it is a BUT with capital letters - when we say Americans or Russians, we have reasons to suspect that the American and Russian involvement in Balochistan is sanctioned, at least in part, by Pentagon (if not White House) and Kremlin.
We would also like to acknowledge that the picture we have gathered is far from complete and except for the explanatory comments of two former KGB officials, we have no way of connecting the dots in any meaningful sequence.
For the sake of honesty, this story should better remain abrupt and incomplete.
The story we are going to tell may sound a lot like cheap whodunit but that is what we found out there.
Before zooming in to January 2002, let's set the background.
We consulted Sasha and Misha, two former KGB officers who are Afghanis - the veterans of Russo-Afghan war - and they seem to know Balochistan better than most Pakistanis. Obviously, Sasha and Misha are not their real names.
They live on the same street in one of the quieter suburbs of Moscow. Two bonds tie them together in their retirement: While on active duty in KGB, they were both frequent travelers to Balochistan during the Russo-Afghan war where they were tasked to foment trouble in Pakistan; and they are both wary of Vodka, the mandatory nectar of Russian cloak and dagger community. They visit each other almost every day and that is why it was easy to catch them together for long chats over quantities of green tea and occasional bowls of Borsch.
We made more than a dozen visits to the single-bedroom flat of Misha, where Sasha was also found more often than not, and we picked their brains on Balochistan situation. As and when we unearthed new information on Balochistan, we returned to Sasha and Misha for comments.
As they told us, during the Russo-Afghan war, the Soviet Union was surprised by the ability and resourcefulness of Pakistan to generate a quick and effective resistance movement in Afghanistan. To punish Pakistan and to answer back in the same currency, Kremlin decided to
create some organizations that would specialize in sabotage activities in Pakistan. One such organization was BLA (Balochistan Liberation Army), the brainchild of KGB that was built around the core of BSO (Baloch Students Organization) .
BSO was a group of assorted left-wing students in Quetta and some other cities of Balochistan.
Misha and Sasha can be considered among the architects of the original BLA.
The BLA they created remained active during the Russo-Afghan war and then it disappeared from the surface, mostly because its main source of funding - the Soviet Union - disappeared from the scene.
In the wake of 9-11, when the United States came rushing to Afghanistan with little preparation and less insight, the need was felt immediately to create sources of information and action that should be independent of the government of Pakistan.
As Bush peered into the soul of Putin and found him a good guy, Rumsfeld also did his own peering into the soul of his Russian counterpart and found him a good game. The result was extensive and generous consultation by Russian veterans who knew more about Afghanistan and Balochistan than the Americans could hope to find.
It was presumably agreed that as long as their interests did not clash with each other directly, the United States (or at least Pentagon) and Kremlin would cooperate with each other in Balochistan.
That brings us to January 2002. "Actually, most of the elements were in place, though dormant, and it was not difficult for anyone with sufficient resources to reactivate the whole thing," said Misha about the present-day BLA that is blamed for most of the sabotage activities in Balochistan.
In January 2002, the first batch of 'instructors' crossed over from Afghanistan into Pakistan to set-up the first training camp. That was the seed from which the present insurgency has sprouted.
It seemed like a modest effort back then. Only two Indians, two Americans, and their Afghan driver-guide were in a faded brown Toyota Hilux double cabin SUV that crossed the border near Rashid Qila in Afghanistan and came to Muslim Bagh in Pakistani province of Balochistan on 17 January 2002. For this part of the journey, they used irregular trails. From Muslim Bagh to Kohlu they followed the regular but less-frequented roads.
In Kohlu they met with some Baloch youth and one American stayed in Kohlu while two Indians and one American went to Dera Bugti and returned after a few days. They spent the next couple of weeks in intense consultations with some Baloch activists and their mentors and then the work started for setting up a camp.
"Balach was one of our good boys and even though I don't know who the present operators are, it can be said safely that Kohlu must have been picked as the first base because of Balach," said Misha.
Balach Marri is the son of Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri and he qualified as electronic engineer from Moscow. As was customary during those times, any Baloch students in Russia were cultivated actively and lavishly by the KGB.
Balach was one of their success stories. Because of intimate connections with India and Russia, it was no surprise that Balach Marri was picked as the new head of the revived BLA. The mountains between Kohlu and Kahan belong to the Marris.
The first camp had some 30 youth and initial classes comprised mainly of indoctrination lectures. The main subjects were: 1. Baloch's right of independence, 2. The Concept of Greater Balochistan, 3. Sabotage as a tool for political struggle, 4. Tyranny of Punjab and plight of oppressed nations, and 5. Media-friendly methods of mass protest.
"Manuals, guidelines and even lecture plans were available in the Kometit [KGB] archives. Except for media interaction, they virtually followed the old plans," told Sasha.
As was logical, the small arms and sabotage training soon entered the syllabus. First shipment of arms and ammunition was received from Afghanistan but as the number of camps grew, new supply routes were opened from India.
Kishangarh is a small Indian town, barely five kilometers from Pakistan border where the provinces of Punjab and Sindh meet. There is a supply depot and a training centre there that maintains contacts with militant training camps in Pakistan, including Balochistan.
There is also a logistics support depot near Shahgarh, about 90 kilometers from Kishangarh, that serves as launching pad for the Indian supplies and experts.
These were unimportant stations in the past but they have gained increasing importance since January 2002 when Balochistan became the hub of a new wave of foreign activity.
The method of transfer from India to Balochistan is simple. Arms and equipment such as Kalashinkov, heavy machine guns, small AA guns, RPGs, mortars, landmines, ammunition and communication equipment are transferred from Kishangarh and Shahgarh to Pakistani side on camel back and then they are shifted to goods trucks, with some legitimate cargo on top and the whole load is covered by tarpaulin sheets. Arms and equipment are, as a rule, boxed in CKD or SKD form.
The trucks have to travel only 140 or 180 kilometers to reach Sui and a little more to reach Kohlu, a distance that can be covered in a few hours only. This is most convenient route because transferring anything from Afghanistan to these areas demands much sturdy vehicles that must cover longer distance over difficult terrain.
The small arms and light equipment are mostly of Russian origin because they are easily available, cheap, and difficult to trace back to any single source.
This route is also handy for sabotaging the Pakistani gas pipelines because the two main arteries of Sui pipe - Sui-Kashmore- Uch-Multan and Sui-Sukkur - are passing, at some points, less than 45 kilometers from the Indian border.
Whoever planned these camps and the subsequent insurgency, had to obtain initial help in recruitment and infrastructure from Indian RAW.
"When we first started the BLA thing, it was logical to ask for RAW assistance because they have several thousands of ground contacts I Pakistan, many of them in Balochistan," said Sasha.
"Anyone wanting to set shop in Pakistan needs to lean on RAW," added Misha.
The number of camps increased with time and now there is a big triangle of instability in Balochistan that has some 45 to 55 training camps, with each camp accommodating from 300 to 550 militants.
A massive amount of cash is flowing into these camps. American defence contractors - a generic term applicable to Pentagon operatives in civvies, CIA foot soldiers, instigators in double-disguise, fortune hunters, rehired ex-soldiers and free lancers - are reportedly playing a big part in shifting loads of money from Afghanistan to Balochistan. The Americans are invariably accompanied by their Afghan guides and interpreters.
Pay structure of militants is fairly defined by now. The ordinary recruits and basic insurgents get around US $ 200 per month, a small fortune for anyone who never has a hope of landing any decent government job in their home towns. The section leaders get upward of US $ 300 and there are special bonuses for executing a task successfully.
Although no exact amount of reward could be ascertained for specific tasks, one can assume that it must be substantial because some BLA activists have lately built new houses in Dalbandin, Naushki, Kohlu, Sibi, Khuzdar and Dera Bugti. Also, quite a few young Baloch activists have recently acquired new, flashy SUVs.
Oddly enough, there is also an unusual indicator for measuring the newfound wealth of some Baloch activists. In the marriage ceremonies the dancing troupes of eunuchs and cross-dressers are raking in much heavier shower of currency notes than before.
Based on the geographic spread of training camps, one can say that there is a triangle of extreme instability in Balochistan. This triangle can be drawn on the map by taking Barkhan, Bibi Nani (Sibi) and Kashmore as three cardinal points.
There is another, larger, triangle that affords a kind of cushion for the first triangle. It is formed by Naushki, Wana (in NWFP) and Kashmore.
Actually, landscape of Balochistan is such that it offers scores of safe havens, inaccessible to outsiders.
Starting from the coastline, there are Makran Coastal Range, Siahan Range, Ras Koh, Sultan Koh and Chagai Hills that are cutting the land in east-west direction. In the north-south direction, we find Suleiman Range, Kirthar Range, Pala Range and Central Brahvi Range to complete the task of forming deep and inaccessible pockets. Few direct routes are possible between the coastline and upper Balochistan. Only two roads connect Balochistan with the rest of the country.
Apart from the triangles of instability that we have mentioned there is an arc - a wide, slowly curving corridor - of extensive activity. It is difficult to make out as to who is doing what in that corridor.
Here is how to draw this arc-corridor on the map: Mark the little Afghan towns of Shah Ismail and Ziarat Sultan Vais Qarni on the map. Then mark the towns of Jalq and Kuhak in Iran. Now, draw a slowly arching curve to connect Shah Ismail with Kuhak and another curve to connect Ziarat Sultan Vais Qarni with Jalq. The corridor formed by these two curves is the scene of a lot of diverse activities and we have been able to gather only some superficial knowledge about it.
The towns of Dalbandin and Naushki where foreign presence has become matter of routine are located within this corridor.
Different entities are making different uses of this corridor. Despite employing some local help, we could find very little about the kind of activity that is bubbling in this corridor.
We found that the Indian consulate in Zahidan, Iran, has hired a house off Khayaban Danishgah, near Hotel Amin in Zahidan. This house is used for accommodating some people who cross over from Afghanistan to Pakistan and from Pakistan to Iran through the arched corridor we have described. But who are those people and what are they doing, we could not find.
We also found that although Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guards), the trusted force directly under the control of Khamenei, are monitoring Zahidan-Taftan road, there is no regular check post of Pasdaran on the road between Khash and Jalq, making it easy for all kinds of elements to cross here and there easily.
We also found that the border between Afghanistan and Iran is mostly under the control of Pasdaran who come down hard on any illegal border movement and that is why the arched corridor passing through Pakistan is the favourite route for any individuals and groups including American 'defence contractors' and their Afghan collaborators who may have the need to go across or near the border of Iran.
Not surprisingly, part of this corridor is used by Iranians themselves when they feel the need to stir some excitement in Pakistan. Iranians also use the regular road of Zahidan-Quetta when they can find someone with legal documents as was the case with an Iranian who has business interests both in Pakistan and Iran and who came to Quetta just before the start of 7 Jan trouble. He has not been heard of since then.
There is a coastal connection that also provides free access for elements in Dubai and Oman to connect with militants in Balochistan. This is a loosely defined route but there are three main landing points in Balochistan: Eastern lip of Gwater Bay that lies in the Iranian territory but affords easy crossover to Pakistan through unguarded land border; 2. Open space between Bomra and Khor Kalmat; and 3. Easternmost shoulder of Gwadar East Bay.
Some Indians, a curious mix of businessmen and crime mafia, came in fishing boats from either Dubai or Oman and landed on the Gwater Bay in the Iranian territory before the start of 7 Jan eruptions. From there they traveled to Khuzdar and then Quetta where they met with some Baloch militants. It is rumoured in those areas that the Indians came with heavy amounts of cash but there was no way of verifying it. They were escorted both ways by some Sarawani Balochs who run their own fishing vessels.
Simultaneously, there were reports from our Washington correspondent that some 'sources' in Pentagon had been trying to 'leak' the story to the media that Americans and Israelis were carrying joint reccee operations inside Iran and for that purpose they were using Pakistani soil as launching point. The lead was finally picked and disseminated by Semour Hersh of The New Yorker.
However, from our own observations in the area we could not confirm this report although there is a possibility that the curving corridor that we have identified may have been used by the Americans and Israelis to travel from Afghanistan into Pakistan and then into Iran and back for this purpose although this is mere speculation, based on the movement of foreigners in this area, and we can neither confirm nor deny the substance of this report.
Also, there was some buzz, as reported by our correspondent in New Delhi, that some high circles were questioning the wisdom of two-faced policy of engaging Islamabad in peace dialogue while at the same time supporting insurgent activity in Balochistan.
It was also not clear as to why Iran would be interested in stirring trouble in Balochistan when it was faced by an imminent war from the American side and it needed all the allies it could muster on its side and one of those allies could possibly be Pakistan. It was also difficult to reconcile Iranian involvement in Balochistan with the fact that Iran-Pakistan- India gas pipeline, that is a crucial project for Iran, was in the final stages of negotiation and there seemed no logical point in sending mixed signals by creating difficulties in Balochistan.
These were some of the questions that we took to Misha and Sasha and here is the explanation they gave. Their answers came in bits and pieces but we have reconstructed their replies in the form of one coherent interview:
Question: What was the purpose of Russian invasion of Afghanistan?
Misha: The Soviet Union was not in love with Afghanistan itself and by now everyone must have understood it. We, or at least our leaders, wanted a convenient corridor to the warm waters of the Indian Ocean — the idea was to first establish full control in Kabul and from there to raise the double-bogey of Pakhtunistan and Greater Balochistan and try to detach at least a part of Balochistan from Pakistan and to either merge it as a new province of Afghanistan or to create a new country that should be under the firm control of Moscow. That would have solved most of the problems facing Kremlin.
Question: When you helped create BLA back in the 1980's, what objectives did you have in mind?
Sasha and Misha: It was simply an instrument to create problems in Pakistan. There were no ideological reasons - it was merely a pragmatic solution for a strategic problem.
Question: Who could have revived BLA after so many years of inactivity?
Misha: Most likely, Pentagon. With good lot of support from Kremlin. You should keep in mind that reviving such an organization is a tricky task and it needs active support from a number of players. Pentagon and Kremlin would not be able to do much without some help from RAW that has hundreds of active contacts all over Balochistan. Russia could have helped negotiate the involvement of Balach Marri in the project.
Sasha: RAW must have jumped at the chance because last July the 'discretionary grants' budget [a euphemism for espionage fund] was increased by 700% in the Indian consulates in Kandahar, Jalalabad and Zahidan.
Misha: Yes, discretionary grants are not subject to central audit and the station chief can do what he wants with it.
Sasha: Balach possibly came to head the revived BLA through Russian facilitation but you cannot say the same for Sardar Ataullah Mengal. He returned from his self-imposed exile in London and established his headquarters in Kohlu. Was it a mere coincidence? I don't think so. In all probability, he is the American man to keep a check on Balach because Americans can never fully trust Russians.
Question: From your comments it appears that Balach and Mengal are heading the resurrected BLA and the BLA has been revived by the Americans and Russians to create trouble in Balochistan but could you give us any coherent reasons for going to such great lengths for disturbing Pakistan that is supposed to be a frontline ally of the United States on its war against terrorism?
Misha and Sasha: [Misha laughed so hard that tears came to his eyes while Sasha merely kept smiling in an absentminded way] - Frontline ally? Are you kidding? Americans are using Pakistan and Pakistanis would soon find it out if they have not already. Americans don't need that kind of allies and they have made it abundantly clear for anyone who can read their policy goals correctly. Let them deal with Iran and you would see. If there can be any desirable American ally in that region, that is Iran - Iran under a different regime, and they are working to that end. Except for Balochistan, the rest of Pakistan is useless for them.
Question: It is still not clear from your answer as to what do the Pentagon and Kremlin hope to achieve by stirring trouble in Balochistan?
Sasha: Americans have two long-term policy objectives in that region: First, create a safe and reliable route to take all the energy resources of Central Asia to the continental United States, and second, to contain China.
Misha: Balochistan offers the shortest distance between the Indian ocean and the Central Asia, that is to say, shortest distance outside of the Gulf. The moment the conditions are ripe, Americans would like to take all the oil and gas of Central Asia to Gwadar or Pasni and from there to the United States.
Question: If the Americans are interested in creating safe channel for shipping energy resources through Balochistan, why would they encourage trouble there?
Misha: That is for now. By inciting trouble, they would effectively discourage Trans-Afghan Pipeline or any other project that is intended for sending Central Asian resources to South Asia. They are not interested in strengthening the South Asian economies by allowing them to obtain sensibly priced oil and gas. They would be more interested in taking all they can to their own country and let everyone else starve if that is the choice.
Sasha: The Americans would also like to discourage China from entering into more development projects in Balochistan than it already has. By developing the port and roads in Balochistan, China is ultimately helping itself by creating a convenient conduit for commerce that would connect China concurrently with Central Asia, South Asia, and all-weather Balochistan ports. The space is limited - where China gains, America loses, and where America gains, China loses.
Questions: OK. This sounds plausible. But what interest could Russia have in helping Pentagon in this trouble-Balochistan project?
Sasha: Russia has its own policy goals and as far as the present phase of creating trouble in Balochistan is concerned, American and Russian goals are not in conflict with each other. Russia wants to maintain its monopoly over all the energy resources of Central Asia. At present, the Central Asian countries are dependent entirely on Russia for export of their gas to any sizeable markets. If Trans-Afghan or any other project succeeds, it would open the floodgates of exodus. Central Asian countries would understandably rush to the market that pays 100% in cash and pays better price than Russia.
It is therefore very clear that by keeping Balochistan red hot, Russia can hope to discourage Trans-Afghan pipeline or any other similar projects. Russian economy in its present form is based on the monopoly of Gazprom and if Gazprom goes under, so will the Russian economy at some stage.
Question: So far, there is some in sense what you have said but how would explain Indian involvement in the Balochistan revolt?
Sasha: India has its own perceived or real objectives. For instance, India would go to great lengths to prevent Pakistan from developing a direct trade and transportation route with Central Asia because it would undermine the North-South corridor that goes through Iran. Also, while the acute shortage of energy may have compelled India to extend limited cooperation to Pakistan, the preferable project from Indian point of view still remains the Iran-Pakistan- India gas pipeline.
Misha: Moreover, you cannot ignore the fact that India is preparing to use Afghanistan as its main artery system to connect with Central Asia and it would not allow Pakistan to share this sphere if it can.
Question: What about Iran? Why should Iran be a party to it?
Misha: Iran has incurred great expenses to develop Chah Bahar, the port that is supposed to be the Iranian answer to Pakistani ports of Gwadar and Pasni. Iran has also done lot of work to create excellent road link between Herat and Chah Bahar. All this would go to waste if Pakistani route comes on line because it is shorter and offers quick commuting possibilities between Central Asia and Indian Ocean.
Sasha: At the same time you need to allow certain margin of unreliability when dealing with Iran. You cannot be sure whether they mean what they are saying and you cannot be sure whether they would keep their promises. They do what suits them best and to hell with any commitments. I am sorry but that is how I judge Iran.
Question: While both of you have given some explanation of American, Russian, Iranian and Indian involvement in Balochistan, what is the role of Afghanistan?
Sasha: There are many influential circles in Afghanistan that are deadly opposed to Pakistan for one reason or the other. While Afghanistan as a country may not be harbouring any ill will against Pakistan, it is difficult to rule out the possibility that some power circles would not be inclined to damage Pakistan wherever they can. It is clear from the recent developments that as India, Iran and Afghanistan have made great strides to form some kind of economic, trade and transportation alliance, all efforts have been made to exclude Pakistan from any such deal.
Question: While BLA is being used by a number of power players for their own objectives, does it have any potential, even as a byproduct, to serve the cause of Baloch people?
Misha and Sasha: BLA is not the only fish in the pond. There is Baloch Ittehad and there is PONAM and there is lots of small fry out there. But none of them can be expected to do any good to the Balochi people because the command this time is mostly in the hands of Baloch Sardars and they have no past record of bringing any benefit to their own people. If anything, they are known to sell their own people down the river.
[Misha thumbed through a dog-eared file and read] Sardar Mehrullah Marri sold all mineral and petroleum rights of Khatan region to the British government in 1885 for a paltry sum of Rs. 200 per month. There was no time limit to this agreement - it was, as they say, in perpetuity.
In 1861, Jam of Bela allowed the British government to put a telegraph line through his territory, thus helping substantially the British government in consolidating its control over large areas of Balochistan. He received less than Rs. 900 per month for this disservice to his own people and took the responsibility to safeguard the telegraph line.
In 1883, the Khan of Kalat sold the Quetta district and adjoining territories to the British government. This was an outright sale. The agreement that was signed in Dasht, included the provision that the heirs and successors of Khan of Kalat would also be bound by the same agreement.
He received annual grant of Rs. 25000 for selling the most attractive part of Balochistan to the British government.
In the same year, the British government paid Rs. 5500 to the Bugti Sardar for his cooperation although it was not specified as to what kind of cooperation he extended to the British government.
While the Baloch Sardars were enthusiastically selling Balochistan to the British government, there was no support to the idea of Pakistan whereas the ordinary Balochs gave full approval for Pakistan. Any positive development in Balochistan would go against the interests of Sardars and only a fool would expect them to do anything for the good of their people.
Bear in mind that Marri and Mengal Sardars first stood up against the Pakistan government when the law was passed to abolish Sardari system in Balochistan to free the ordinary Balochs from the clutches of their tribal leaders.
Question: The way the things are progressing in Balochistan, what could be the likely outcome?
Misha: If no strong action is taken for another few months, the result could be bifurcation of Pakistan.
Question: Is that the only likely outcome?
Misha: No. In fact, that is the farthest possible scenario but that could eventually happen if Pakistan fails to assess, analyze and address the situation quickly. For example, I have yet to see any Pakistani effort to contact the ordinary Balochs. They are still trying to woo the same Sardars who are living on the blackmail money since the creation of Pakistan.
Sasha: I am surprised at the way Pakistan goes about tackling this problem. During my few years in Afghanistan when I was engaged with Balochistan, I found that while Baloch Sardars would sell their loyalties and anything else at the drop of a hat, ordinary Balochs are stupidly patriotic. They are hard to buy and harder to manipulate. If I were a Pakistan government functionary, I would gather enough ordinary, educated Balochs to counter the Sardar influence and deflate this whole insurgency balloon.
Question: Both of you were, let's say, among the developers of the original BLA. Do you find any differences between the original and the present BLA?
Misha and Sasha: Plenty. Original BLA was mostly led by the young people and Baloch Sardars had very little to do with it but the present BLA is concentrated in the hands of Sardars..
The present movement in Balochistan, led by BLA, PONAM and Baloch Ittehad is a mismatched concoction of ancient and modern.
They are trying to run a modern media campaign but there are crucial gaps in that effort. Ours were different times and we could do without media support. They have created a list of Pakistani journalists who are supposed to be sympathetic to any move against the government and they are feeding them daily a mixture of truth and lies, a practice that has been perfected by the Pentagon.
They managed to bring some Baloch women in Dera Bugti but the results would be little if they cannot repeat the performance in most other areas of Balochistan.
They have built their campaign around a single incident - the Sui gang-rape - and if the government is smart enough, it would hang the real culprits and ask the victim of the rape to announce publicly that she was satisfied with the justice meted out to the criminals and that would take all the wind out of the sails of the BLA campaign. A real hard campaign needs to be built around much broader and hard to solve issues.
Question: Hypothetically speaking, if the Pakistan government asked your advice, what would you suggest?
Sasha: The options are few. They should abolish Sardari system immediately and crack down powerfully on the private armies. As far as I know, the constitution of Pakistan does not allow Sardari system and private armies and there would be no legal questions if those laws are implemented with the full help of state power.
Misha: They should involve broadest possible range of ordinary Balochs in the dialogue. The can find enough educated youth in Marri and Mengal tribes to match the influence of tribal leaders. They should also allow the fragments of Bugti tribe to return to their ancestral lands and that would be enough to calm down the ageing and eccentric Bugti who pretends to be the leader of that tribe.
Sasha: Pakistan government should hasten the development process in the province because it would open job opportunities and that would allow the escape hatch to ordinary Balochs to distance themselves from their leaders.
Misha: They should try to cut down the sources and channels of supply of arms and cash to insurgents
-----------------------------------------------------------
N A D E E M M A L I K
Director Programme
AAJ TV
ISLAMABAD
00-92-321-5117511
nadeem.malik@hotmail.com
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U.S. Weighs Taliban Strike Into Pakistan
U.S. Weighs Taliban Strike Into Pakistan
According to senior administration officials, two of the high-level reports on Pakistan and Afghanistan that have been forwarded to the White House in recent weeks have called for broadening the target area to include a major insurgent sanctuary in and around the city of Quetta.
Mullah Muhammad Omar, who led the Taliban government that was ousted in the American-led invasion in 2001, has operated with near impunity out of the region for years, along with many of his deputies.
The extensive missile strikes being carried out by Central Intelligence Agency-operated drones have until now been limited to the tribal areas, and have never been extended into Baluchistan, a sprawling province that is under the authority of the central government, and which abuts the parts of southern Afghanistan where recent fighting has been the fiercest. Fear remains within the American government that extending the raids would worsen tensions. Pakistan complains that the strikes violate its sovereignty.
But some American officials say the missile strikes in the tribal areas have forced some leaders of the Taliban and Al Qaeda to flee south toward Quetta, making them more vulnerable. In separate reports, groups led by both Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of American forces in the region, and Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, a top White House official on Afghanistan, have recommended expanding American operations outside the tribal areas if Pakistan cannot root out the strengthening insurgency.
Many of Mr. Obama's advisers are also urging him to sustain orders issued last summer by President George W. Bush to continue Predator drone attacks against a wider range of targets in the tribal areas. They also are recommending preserving the option to conduct cross-border ground actions, using C.I.A. and Special Operations commandos, as was done in September. Mr. Bush's orders also named as targets a wide variety of insurgents seeking to topple Pakistan's government. Mr. Obama has said little in public about how broadly he wants to pursue those groups.
A spokesman for the National Security Council, Mike Hammer, declined to provide details, saying, "We're still working hard to finalize the review on Afghanistan and Pakistan that the president requested."
No other officials would talk on the record about the issue, citing the administration's continuing internal deliberations and the politically volatile nature of strikes into Pakistani territory.
"It is fair to say that there is wide agreement to sustain and continue these covert programs," said one senior administration official. "One of the foundations on which the recommendations to the president will be based is that we've got to sustain the disruption of the safe havens."
Mr. Obama's top national security advisers, known as the Principals Committee, met Tuesday to begin debating all aspects of Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy. Senior administration officials say Mr. Obama has made no decisions, but is expected to do so in coming days after hearing the advice of that group.
Any expansion of the war is bound to upset those in Mr. Obama's party who worry that he is sinking further into a lengthy conflict in Afghanistan, even while reducing forces in Iraq. It is possible that the decisions about covert actions will never be publicly announced.
Several administration and military officials stressed that they continued to prod the Pakistani military to take the lead in a more aggressive campaign to root out Taliban and Qaeda fighters who are attacking American forces in Afghanistan and increasingly destabilizing nuclear-armed Pakistan.
But with Pakistan consumed by political turmoil, fear of financial collapse and a spreading insurgency, American officials say they have few illusions that the United States will be able to rely on Pakistan's own forces. However, each strike by Predators or ground forces reverberates in Pakistan, and Mr. Obama will be weighing that cost.
Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on "The Charlie Rose Show" on PBS last week that the White House strategy review addresses the "safe haven in Pakistan — making sure that Afghanistan doesn't provide a capability in the long run or an environment in which Al Qaeda could return or the Taliban could return." But another senior official cautioned that "with the targets now spreading, an expanding U.S. role inside Pakistan may be more than anyone there can stomach."
As part of the same set of decisions, according to senior civilian and military officials familiar with the internal White House debate, Mr. Obama will have to choose from among a range of options for future American commitments to Afghanistan.
His core decision may be whether to scale back American ambitions there to simply assure it does not become a sanctuary for terrorists. "We are taking this back to a fundamental question," a senior diplomat involved in the discussions said. "Can you ever get a central government in Afghanistan to a point where it can exercise control over the country? That was the problem Bush never really confronted."
A second option, officials say, is to significantly boost the American commitment to train Afghan troops, with Americans taking on the Taliban with increasing help from the Afghan military. President Bush pursued versions of that strategy, but the training always took longer and proved less successful than plans called for.
A third option would involve devoting full American and NATO resources to a large-scale counterinsurgency effort. But Mr. Obama would be bound to face considerable opposition within NATO, whose leaders he will meet with early next month in Strasbourg, France. At the very time the United States is seeking to expand its presence in Afghanistan, many of the allies are scheduled to leave.
As for American strikes on militant havens inside Pakistan, administration officials say the Predator and Reaper attacks in the tribal areas have been effective at killing 9 of Al Qaeda's top 20 leaders, and the aerial campaign was recently expanded to focus on the Pakistani Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, as well as his fighters and training camps. American intelligence officials say that many top Taliban commanders remain in hiding in and around Quetta, but some Afghan officials say that other senior Taliban leaders have fled to the Pakistani port city of Karachi.
Missile strikes or American commando raids in the city of Quetta or the teeming Afghan settlements and refugee camps around the city and near the Afghan border would carry high risks of civilian casualties, American officials acknowledge.
-----------------------------------------------------------
N A D E E M M A L I K
Director Programme
AAJ TV
ISLAMABAD
00-92-321-5117511
nadeem.malik@hotmail.com
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Pre-restoration talkshow
Athar Minullah and Dr. Firdous Ashiq Awan (Pre-restoration)
http://www.friendskorner.com/forum/f137/aaj-focus-nadeem-malik-14th-march-2009-a-100078/
http://www.friendskorner.com/forum/f...6/#post1062591
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DITORIAL: Mrs. Clinton's wrong message on religion
DITORIAL: Mrs. Clinton's wrong message on religion
Monday, February 23, 2009
During Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's Asian tour, a Japanese student asked her how to "eliminate the prejudice towards the Islamic world" in the context of the war on terrorism. Mrs. Clinton responded that the struggle against terrorism is not the result of prejudice against the Muslim world, but a defense against violent extremism. So far so good. Then she added, "Every religion has people who misuse that religion. You know, I'm a Christian, and through the centuries we've had many people who have done terrible things in the name of Christianity. They have perverted the religion."
These pandering remarks send the wrong message. First, we wonder why Mrs. Clinton felt it necessary to bring up Christianity. "Christian terrorism" is not exactly making headlines these days. Perhaps she has a working knowledge of what constitutes "pure" as opposed to "perverse" Christianity.
More importantly, it is wrong to assume a posture of value neutrality vis-à-vis the Muslim world on the matter of the free exercise of faith. One certainly never hears these kinds of comments from Middle Eastern diplomats. This is a part of the world where many countries, though not all of them, have erected legal and other barriers to the expression of faiths other than the official religion. Non-Muslims are charged special taxes (jizya), converts from Islam are threatened with death, and foreign missionaries must conduct their activities as covert operations or be killed. While Europe and the Americas have seen mosques sprouting up in cities and in the countryside, often subsidized by foreign quasi-governmental organizations, similar construction projects would be illegal or at best highly dangerous undertakings in many Muslim states.
Rather than pandering, the United States should be sending a positive message to the world regarding the role of religion in our society. The United States is a plural nation with constitutionally guaranteed freedom of worship. In our country people of all faiths live side by side without strife. Religion plays an important role in American society, but in a way that respects the rights and obligations of all believers and, as President Obama likes to point out, the rights of the non-believers as well. Mrs. Clinton might profitably have extolled the value of religious pluralism in Indonesia, the next stop on her trip, which is not an Islamic state despite having the world's largest Muslim population. Indonesia's constitution guarantees freedom of worship and the state recognizes six major religious denominations. Christmas and Good Friday are national holidays, as are Hindu New Year and Buddha's Birthday.
Were Mrs. Clinton bolder still, she could use the example of Israel, in which freedom of worship is so respected that Israeli sharia courts have the same legal status as rabbinical courts in matters of personal status, such as cases of marriage and divorce. Furthermore, the holiest site in the world for Jews, the Temple Mount, is dominated by a gold-domed mosque. Will we ever see a synagogue in Mecca?
Mrs. Clinton should not give ammunition to our enemies by offhandedly raising the issue of Christian "perversions" and placing the religious freedom that we enjoy on the same moral plane as the restrictive policies practiced in other parts of the world. If she truly wants to communicate "what we stand for and who we truly are," she should defend our values rather than surrendering the high ground on the issue of religious freedom.
Friday, March 13, 2009
American Envoys Try to Defuse a Political Crisis in Pakistan
American Envoys Try to Defuse a Political Crisis in Pakistan
Later on Thursday, the Obama administration's special envoy to Pakistan, Richard C. Holbrooke, spoke by video conference call to Pakistan's president, Asif Ali Zardari, Mr. Zardari's office announced. Mr. Holbrooke also spoke to Mr. Sharif by telephone, Mr. Holbrooke's office said.
The involvement of two senior American officials prompted speculation here that the United States was trying to broker a deal that would ease the standoff between the rivals and end the potential for violence as a coalition of opposition and citizens' groups prepared for a march that the government had banned.
The Obama administration apparently fears that the rising tensions between the politicians could further derail Pakistan's efforts to quell a growing insurgency by Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Mr. Sharif, who plans to appear at antigovernment rallies this weekend, said he told Ms. Patterson that the next move was up to Mr. Zardari.
"We went out of our way to show patience, tolerance, despite the broken promises of Mr. Zardari," Mr. Sharif said. "All of a sudden they struck, they delivered a very heavy blow; it was like you stab someone in the back."
Mr. Sharif made several demands of Mr. Zardari: remove the federal rule imposed on his home base, Punjab Province; rescind the judicial ruling that denied Mr. Sharif and his brother the right to run in elections; and restore an independent judiciary.
The government has said it acted to restore law and order and subdue Mr. Sharif, whom it accused of trying to foment revolution and court Islamists to buttress his power. Mr. Sharif's supporters accuse the government of suppressing dissent.
A presidential spokesman pointed out Friday that Mr. Sharif's history was less than perfect. "Mr Sharif has a long history of taking unreasonable positions and pretending to be principled," said the spokesman, Farhatullah Babar. "As someone who ordered his party supporters to storm the Supreme Court in 1998, his claims to fight for judicial independence sounds so hollow."
On Wednesday night, Mr. Holbrooke spoke to Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, who has distanced himself from Mr. Zardari by saying that federal rule of the provincial assembly in Punjab should end quickly. The crackdown against protesters continued Thursday as hundreds of police officers in riot gear used batons against lawyers and protesters outside the Sindh High Court in Karachi. More than a dozen lawyers were arrested, including a leader of the movement, Munir Malik, who was imprisoned during President Pervez Musharraf's rule, and a leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, a right-wing Islamic party that supports the lawyers.
Later, the police in Karachi took the keys of the buses and vans lined up at a toll plaza, hoping to halt a long march from several sites in Pakistan that is expected to converge on Islamabad, the capital, on Monday. Lawyers dressed in black suits scuffled with the police at the toll plaza, and several were dragged into police vans.
The government imposed a law in the two most populous provinces, Sindh and Punjab, that prohibits any gathering of more than four people.
The police have arrested hundreds of political workers of Mr. Sharif's party.
In an interview here lasting more than an hour, Mr. Sharif said the impression in Washington that he was too close to radical Islamists was misconceived. Mr. Musharraf and Mr. Zardari had spread the idea as a way of settling political scores, he said.
One reason Mr. Sharif is seen by some American officials as being sympathetic to the Islamists is that he introduced legislation as prime minister that called on the federal government to enforce Islamic law. The bill passed the lower house of the Parliament but failed in the upper house.
Mr. Sharif said he was well aware of the terrorist threat to Pakistan, but as the Obama administration was now doing, he said, Pakistan had to see what "new approaches" should be used to deal with the insurgency.
He made it clear he believed that a dialogue with those militants who would talk was preferable to military actions, and he said he believed in mobilizing the nation in a "united front" against terrorism. He accused Mr. Zardari of failing to curb insurgents in two areas now controlled by the Taliban. "These matters are so huge, Mr. Zardari fails to gauge the magnitude of those problems in the tribal areas, in Swat," he said.
"If we start fighting democracy, how are we going to fight terror?" Mr. Sharif said.
Mr. Sharif was prime minister twice in the 1990s. His second term ended when he was ousted in October 1999 in a coup by Mr. Musharraf, then a general.
From his time as prime minister, Mr. Sharif talks of warm feelings toward former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton, now secretary of state. In July 1999, Mr. Sharif rushed to Washington to seek Mr. Clinton's help in ending a nuclear standoff between India and Pakistan.
Many Pakistani commentators have worried that the army will oust the civilian government if the conflict between Mr. Zardari and Mr. Sharif persists.
But Mr. Sharif said he doubted that the military under Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who served as his deputy military secretary during his first term as prime minister, would do so. "I think he is a decent man and a professional soldier," he said.
Mr. Sharif was lying low on Thursday at the mansion that serves as his headquarters on a farm that he inherited from his father. The government sent him a letter on Thursday warning him about security threats.
But he appeared unfazed and said he would join a rally in Lahore on Saturday.
He had not decided whether to join the sit-in in Islamabad that the government had explicitly banned. But his party members will. "The government should allow the sit-in in the capital and ensure the peace," he said.
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Wednesday, March 11, 2009
THE CURRENT ECONOMIC CRISIS EXPLAINED by Shahid Khan
Some of us have had a problem understanding the current global recession. I thought it might be worthwhile explaining it in simple terms.
FM Shah
THE CURRENT ECONOMIC CRISIS EXPLAINED by Shahid Khan
Pajja is the proprietor of a Siri-Paya and Nehari Shop in Lahore. Sales are low and, in order to increase them, he comes up with a plan to allow his customers to eat now and pay later. He keeps track of the meals consumed on a ledger.
Word gets around and as a result increasing numbers of customers flock to Pajja's shop. Pajja's suppliers are delighted and are very willing to sell more and more raw materials for the meals he prepares. Pajja shows them his ledger of receivables and they extend him credit.
A young and dynamic customer service consultant at the local bank recognizes these customer debts as valuable future assets and gives Pajja a credit line and then increases Pajja's borrowing limit.
Taking advantage of his customers' freedom from immediate payment constraints, Pajja jacks up the prices of his Nehari and Siri-Paye. Customers dont mind as they are not required to pay on the spot. Sales volume increases massively; Banks and suppliers lend more; Pajja opens more outlets. He sees no reason for undue concern since he has the debts of the customers as collateral.
At the bank's corporate headquarters, expert bankers recognize Pajja's customer loans as assets and transform these customer assets into BONDS. These negotiable instruments are given exotic names such as SIRIBOND, PAYABOND, MAGHAZBOND AND BONGBOND. These securities are then listed on the Stock Exchange and traded on markets worldwide. No one really understands what the names mean and how the securities are guaranteed but, nevertheless, as their prices continuously climb, the securities become top-selling items.
One day, although the prices are still climbing, a credit risk manager of the bank decides that the time has come to demand payment of one of the debts incurred by Pajja. Pajja in turn asks his clients to pay up. One by one they refuse; the clients cannot pay back the debts. Pajja refuses to serve them any more. The clients stop coming.
Pajja is really screwed now. He cannot fulfill his loan obligations and therefore claims bankruptcy.All Bonds drop in price by between 80 to 95%.
The suppliers of Pajja, having granted generous payment due dates and having invested in the securities are faced with similar problems. The meat supplier defaults on payment to the sheep and cattle supplier and claims bankruptcy. The atta supplier is taken over by a competitor; Pajja lays off the cook and staff. Bankruptcies soar, unemployment mushrooms.
The bank that lent the money in the first place is set to collapse. It is saved by the Government following dramatic round-the-clock consultations by leaders from the governing political parties with Pajja commuting back and forth in his Executive jet and Mercedes 500SEL, brokering the deal.
The funds required to save the economic collapse are obtained by a tax levied on the citizens, most of whom do not eat Nehari or Siri-paye.
UNDERSTOOD?
Asif Ali Zardari
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N A D E E M M A L I K
Director Programme
AAJ TV
ISLAMABAD
00-92-321-5117511
nadeem.malik@hotmail.com
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Seven Years Later: Assessing the War on Terror
By Muqtedar Khan
Director of Islamic Studies
University of Delaware
US
It is seven years since that terrible day of September 11, 2001 when
terrorists killed 3000 Americans. It triggered in a massive global
response by the US. As President Bush's term comes to an end, it is
time to assess the prudence of his policies.
1. President Bush's "global war on terrorism" neither eliminated nor
reduced global terrorism. It actually caused an exponential rise in
the number of incidences and number of victims. The surge in terrorism
as seen in the table below is a direct response to US invasion of
Iraq.
Year Terrorist Attacks Deaths caused by Terrorism
2001 531 3295
2002 199 725
2003 208 625
2004 651 1907
2005 11,111 74,087
2006 14,000 20,866
2007 14,499 22,666
(Data is from State Department and the National Counterterrorism Center)
2. The two strategies of the Bush administration, preemptive wars and
treatment of terrorism as war and not as a crime, have both been
discredited. A survey of a bipartisan panel of terrorism experts
conducted by Foreign Policy Magazine found that 70% of them believed
the US was losing the war on terror.
1. The Bush wars have caused 35,000 American casualties, 4700 dead and
30,000 wounded.
1. Deaths by terrorism in Europe, Middle East and Asia have risen
dramatically since 9/11. Civilian deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan and
Pakistan, at the hands of terrorists, insurgents, US and NATO forces,
are approaching nearly a million by some estimates and the refugees
generated by these conflicts exceed over 3 million.
1. A recent Rand Corporation study of 648 terrorist organizations has
concluded that over 43% of them have ended after they were included
in the political process, only 7% were destroyed by use of military
force and 40% were eliminated through policing and criminal
prosecution. This report shows how the very idea of "war" in the war
on terror was fundamentally wrong.
1. The dominant discourse on terrorism sought to blame terrorism,
especially suicide bombings, on Islam to detract from scrutiny of
political realities. University of Chicago Professor Robert Pape, the
author of Dying to Kill: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism,
studied over 462 cases of suicide terrorism between 1980 and 2003 and
concluded that there was no connection between Islam and suicide
terrorism. The overwhelming cause, he found, was occupation by foreign
military forces. Another fundamental fact that Bush strategy
systematically ignores.
Take Iraq, for example. Islam has existed there for 1400 years and in
spite of Saddam Hussein's oppressive regime it spawned no suicide
terrorism. It all started only after the US occupation and it is
receding now as occupation is replaced by self-governance.
1. A majority of victims of terrorism, according to the National
Counterterrorism Center (50%-70%), are Muslims. This fact alone
undermines a fundamental assumption of the war on terror, that the
current crisis is a clash of civilizations between Islam and the West.
Bush administration's response has also led to some disastrous
consequences for America. Here are some hard truths:
1. America's war in Iraq has made anti-Americanism a dominant feature
of the global culture. Things have improved since 2004, but still in a
2007 global survey by BBC, the US was found to have the third most
negative standing in the world (after Israel and Iran).
1. The war on terror has alienated allies, and undermined US capacity
to deal with international crisis as evidenced from our meek responses
to a resurgent Russia. The US simply is not able to assert its will
overseas anymore.
1. The economy has reached its limit. The excessive cost of the Iraq
war has handicapped our ability to address effectively the
infra-structural, health, housing, educational and energy crises that
confront us.
1. Under the Bush administration America has become a nation that
preaches human rights and practices torture. Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib
and the Patriot Act have become our milestones of shame.
But there is some good news:
1. Courts in the US are fighting back, restoring civil rights and
rejecting the abuse of executive privilege by the current
administration.
1. The US homeland, thank God, remains safe from terrorist attacks.
Terrorists have caused death and destruction but have not achieved any
enduring or transformative success anywhere.
1. The tide is turning against extremism across the Muslim World as
evidenced by Pakistan's return to democracy, the proliferation
offatwas against terrorism and Iraqi Sunni's abandonment of support
for al Qaeda and insurgents.
1. Relentless failure of policy is awakening Americans to the need for
change in policy.
1. Even the Republicans, who stood by President Bush in the past, have
seen the light. They nominated the most unRepublican Republican as
their candidate for President.
This article is a self-critical reflection from an American
perspective. My critique of the catastrophic policies of the Bush
administration should not be misconstrued as support for extremism in
the Muslim world. I have nothing but contempt and loathing for those
who kill innocent people for political gains in the name of God or
Islam.
In spite of all the damage that G.W. Bush's misguided policies have
caused the US, it still remains the best place on earth to live a life
of intellectual, spiritual and material pursuits. But, we cannot
afford many more years like the last seven.
(Muqtedar Khan is Director of Islamic Studies at the University of
Delaware and a Fellow of the Institute for Social Policy and
Understanding)
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
ISLAMABAD TONIGHT ON JUDGES' RESTORATION (JUSTICE KHALIL RAMDAY AND KHAWAJA SHARIF)
GUEST: JUSTICE KHALIL UR REHMAN RAMDAY AND JUSTICE KHAWAJA SHARIF (DESPOED JUDGES 0F SCP AND LHC)
http://www.friendskorner.com/forum/f137/islamabad-tonight-9th-march-2009-[khaleel-ur-rehman-ramdey]-98972/
http://pkpolitics.com/2009/03/09/islamabad-tonight-9-march-2009/
-----------------------------------------------------------
N A D E E M M A L I K
Director Programme
AAJ TV
ISLAMABAD
00-92-321-5117511
nadeem.malik@hotmail.com
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MINORITY OVER MAJORITY: AGHA KHAN (I till IV)
MINORITY OVER MAJORITY: AGHA KHAN (I till IV)
The success story of Asians tigers is a huge blow to the ego. One feels self -conscious, almost ashamed at the ease with which many 3rd world countries have developed their institutions and social structure based on rule of law and democracy. Pakistan, on the other hand, is still ruled by western puppets, military dictators, corrupt politicians, borrowed education system and colonial era bureaucracy sixty years after independence and in the twenty first century. Pakistan finds itself at cross road on various issues like democracy, rule of law, justice, role of Islam and Sharia. Various mainstream scholars have presented various explanations, justifications and reasons for Pakistan failure ranging from Law of necessity to civil-military bureaucracy and Mullah to religious intolerance. It is easy to say that we had tremendous bad luck as power was snatched by civil military bureaucracy with collusion of judicial law of necessity. However the reason why our systems are not working has less to do with these factors and more with myopic and unidirectional view of events in our colonial history. All mainstream media, writers, academics and scholars' have certain assumptions and ignore various historical facts. Some of these myths are following
a) It was not possible to resist British after 1857 through resistance. Sir Syed Strategy for active collaboration and loyalty to British Empire was the best possible and only option. Please recall in the same era British had already lost USA, they were pulling out of Afghanistan and were facing resistance in opium wars.
b) British modernized India, if West has not colonized India, it still would have been in stone ages. Industrial revolution was the best and indigenous European phenomena. It was direct result of the surplus in European societies due to colonial loot plunder from resource rich Indo-Pak and China. Quite interestingly for last 5000 years known history out of 1,00,000 years human history on earth, both India and China (2/5 of the globe) has always been super rich except last 200 years during colonial era.
c) East India Company and British Empire colonization of Indo-Pak is considered a natural process similar and continuity of Pre-Islamic era Hindu rule followed by Muslim rule. Rather some declare British colonial rule better than local Muslim or Hindu rule. However India was self sufficient, resource rich and center of civilization for more than 5,000 year when ruled locally either by Hindu or Muslim. Whereas by mere 200 years of colonial rule, Indo-Pak is still ruled by poverty and life vary from poverty to extreme poverty. Such terrible conditions of masses have been unknown in Indian subcontinent for last 5000 year except colonial rule
d) Gandhi and Bacha Khan non violence campaigns are considered indigenous and best philosophy for resistance. Quite fascinatingly British benefited most from such non violence campaigns in critical era, as it strengthen colonial grip on Indo-Pak moreover such campaigns diverted people from armed resistance to British empire. Similarly Muslim league(brainchild of Agha-III) is considered a pure Muslim phenomena whereas the primary objective of Muslim league was Muslims loyally, which was need of time for British Empire as it needed badly Indian wealth and troops on various fronts ranging from local to international fronts.
e) Similarly it is believe that every thing was fine and nice till 1947 and all the evils in Pakistan popped out blue after 1947. The only acknowledged evil from pre-Pakistan are feudal. Various other actors, cartels and sold outs who collaborated and strengthened British colonial are never discussed, touched and exposed.
f) Pakistan is considered the outcome of Muslim League efforts under Jinnah leadership. However it is easily overlooked that Pakistan was strategic necessity for Western policies in the region against USSR. USA persuaded actively UK to expedite Indian division. Meaning thereby, it should not be shocking and surprise that why Pakistan always lay down in front of West especially USA.
g) British imported/created various minorities like Agha Khanis, Parsis and Qadianis. These minorities actively collaborated with East India Company and British Empire against masses. These minorities are more powerful than state and have been imposed over majorities.
Our colonial state structures from beginning are skewed and our history of national movement has been anything but fair. What accounts for this? What is so inherently wrong in our system or psyche that does not allow our system and institutions to work? The failure of Pakistan is an old question but well worth revisiting.
It is not possible to discuss all of the above stated historic fallacies in detail. However as interesting case, Agha Khanis active role for British Empire and their activities against masses and Muslim ummah will be discussed in detail. This case study will help in understanding the affect of imposing minorities over majorities. Once state policies revolve around minorities, then rule of law, democracy and principle based society can not be exist. Islam, Quran and Sharia become controversial. In this case study on Agha Khani, traditional Sunni/Shia ulema references have been avoided. Western authors, European scholar's and Agha Khani references have been preferred. Some of the sources are given below:-
1. The History of the Assassins by Von Hammer
2. The Memoirs of Agha Khan Cassell and Company Ltd. London 1954
3. The Assassins by Bernard Lewis,
4. Spirit of Islam by Ameer Ali
5. Noorum Mubin by Gulam Ali Chunara
6. Ismailis by Farhad Daftari
7. A History of the Secret Societies by Arcane Deary
8. Sayasatnama by Nizam-ul-Mulk
9. The Origins of Isma'ilism. by Bernard Lewis
10. Encyclopedia Britannia (11th Edition )
It is very important to note these privileged and over protected minorities do not include Christian, Hindus and Sikhs. Just like common masses in Pakistan, Christian, Hindus and Sikhs mostly faces the discrimination, intolerance in our society. These minorities are under protected and local inhabitants since centuries.
Regards
FM Shah