Pakistan: The Next US Target

[muse]

Fighting Terror and National Interest
Nasim Zehra

13 September 2008
Pakistan’s role in the Washington-led “war on terrorism” promises to remain a matter of great internal acrimony until we do not formulate a policy that conceptually, politically and operationally locates it within the context of our own national interests and in keeping with our own Constitution and legal frameworks.

So, is there a national interest dimension to our participation? Yes, there is. Pakistan does face an acute internal security crisis. This, and this alone, is the broad formulation of our national challenge. It is within this broad formulation that elements like suicide bombings, rising militancy, foreign militants, Al Qaeda presence, rising sectarian killings, the receding writ of the state, US pressures, Pakistan’s UN obligations, the external factor, the Pakistani-Afghan border situation, must be placed and then comprehensively examined for policy options available to Pakistan. Instead of such a formulation there are numerous examples that manifest at best confusion and at worst the continuing poverty of policymaking, especially where tackling militancy and terrorism is concerned. Three recent examples are noteworthy.

First, official Pakistan’s response to the first-ever US ground attack on Pakistani territory and Pakistani civilians was neither coherent nor sustained. Civilians who died in South Waziristan were killed late night by US soldiers who opened fire on sleeping men, women and children. Pakistan’s response to the attacks, included the passage of a parliament resolution condemning the attack, the then presidential candidate Asif Ali Zardari and the foreign secretary separately summoned and reprimanded the US ambassador, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee announcing that another attack will force Pakistan to take action. A less publicised letter was written to the US government by the Pakistani national security advisor that the ground attack was a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. An initial Pakistani reaction of using the leverage it enjoys over the Nato and US forces stopping supplies through Pakistan was hurriedly reversed and the Americans were informed the supply was stopped due to security reasons. All these noises notwithstanding, US aerial missile attacks have increased killing hardly any Al Qaeda operatives but leaving civilians dead. Significantly, the army chief, Gen. Parvez Kayani, and the DGMO, Lt. Gen. Pasha, met with the US General Mullen, the CENTCOM chief and the US general based in Afghanistan prior to the ground attack.

The second example of our policy confusion and perhaps lack of transparency are Washington’s statements about Pakistan’s cooperation convey complete satisfaction with the cooperation being extended by it. What is the basis of this satisfaction while the government of Pakistan is publicly angered by the ongoing US attacks?

The third and most recent example of a lack of policy coherence flows from the newly elected president’s statements made at his inaugural Press conference held jointly with the Afghan president. President Asif Ali Zardari’s first articulation of the problems accrued to Pakistan from internal terrorism, from a destabilised Afghanistan and from Washington’s attacks on Pakistani territory raised several questions. For example, when he was asked about the government’s response to the United States’ continued attacks on Pakistan, instead of using the opportunity to emphasise commitment to Pakistan’s sovereignty and integrity, he merely stated that the government had registered its complaint. Karzai used stronger words to reprimand the US for killing Afghan civilians. Admittedly, words do not substitute action, yet they reveal mindsets and understanding. Somewhat perplexing was the president’s response to a rather naïve yet logical question, that would he call the US government terrorists for the deliberate killing of women and children in Pakistan. Zardari said that the Americans are there in Afghanistan under the UN sanction, if you want to call the UN a terrorist organisation, then you can do so.” This rather incomprehensible statement is counterfactual too. While under the UNSC resolution 1373 all UN member-states are obliged to cooperate in UN-sanctioned international efforts to curb terrorism, equally all nations under Article 51 of the UN Charter have the right to act in self-defence.

More importantly, attacks on Pakistani territory and Pakistani civilians have been carried out by US drones and US forces, and not by UN-sanctioned forces executing a UN mandate. In fact, Washington has already informed the government that the Sept 4 ground assault was a CIA-operation undertaken by a CIA contingent--a far cry from a UN-mandated operation. Only NATO-led ISAF forces, in which only 14,000 US troops are inducted, are present under UN sanctions. By contrast, the exclusively American military mission Enduring Freedom, which commands 19,000 US troops, is in Afghanistan under a US, not UN, mandate.

It was striking that the Afghan president felt confident enough to stand by strong allegations made by him in the recent past against Pakistan’s institutions, yet Pakistan’s president did was underscore that a chunk of the problem also flowed from the political and security disarray that currently prevails within Afghanistan.

Whatever the private conversation, public diplomacy, conducted for example through the joint press conference, required the president, like his Afghan counterpart, to put across the Pakistani-Afghan problem in the broader context. Surely the new president does recognise that if on the one hand Pakistan has suffered from unconstitutional military ascendancy in policymaking and internal institutional clashes, the problems within Afghanistan continue to contribute to our problems ranging from militancy to terrorism.

Pakistan’s new government must remain mindful of the fact that, while ignoring the political and security havoc created by US policies in Iraq and Afghanistan, no less in Palestine, Pakistan is being increasingly framed as the root cause of terrorism and militancy. While admittedly there are aspects of our acute internal security crisis that contribute to the worsening of the regional problem of terrorism and of militancy, the vice versa is also true.

Ultimately, the entire policy must be framed within the context of Pakistan’s core interests and priorities; those that will best promote and protect the rights, security and prosperity of the people of Pakistan. Until policy parameters are not laid out within the national context, while factoring in external concerns and interests, Pakistan will continue on the path of reactive and destabilising response to external pressures. If Pakistan continues to travel along such a path it risks turning into a Lebanon-like weak state, a fragmented polity and a strife-torn society. In the eighties it got sucked into a US-supported regional mess, losing the peace, progress and tranquillity that it enjoyed in the pre-eighties era.

In this age of indispensable multilateralism, in trade, security and even politics, Pakistan must not be paralysed by fear of economic meltdowns.

Rhetoric aside, interdependency means nations have a stake in each other’s survival and stability. Pakistan has multiple avenues of economic and security engagements. It must make take to policymaking with competence, confidence and rationality, remain realistically mindful of the linkages and leverages and strategic realities that are available to it, and abandon fear as a policy motive.

The writer is an Islamabad-based security analyst

 

[muse]

Some insight into the WHY behind US actions - again note the absence of policy, but not a absence of political sense in a election year - we already have Mike Mullen suggesting that the US may fail, now we can better understand the frustration


Ex-envoy attacks Afghan strategy

Francesc Vendrell interviewed on the BBC's HARDtalk

The West has no coherent strategy for victory in Afghanistan, according to the former EU envoy Francesc Vendrell.

Mr Vendrell told BBC TV's HARDtalk programme the Afghan plan needed an overhaul - but this was not possible under the current US administration.

Mr Vendrell, who left office in August, lamented "many mistakes" made in Afghanistan and called for fast action against corruption rife in the country.

The US is set to announce a modest boost to its Afghan troop contingent.

US President George W Bush is expected to reveal plans for a "quiet surge" in troop levels in Afghanistan, coinciding with the withdrawal of some 8,000 US troops from Iraq.

Impossible to change

Mr Vendrell was asked on HARDtalk if the West had a coherent strategy to bring peace to Afghanistan.

"No," was his reply. "Because for as long as the Bush administration is in office it is impossible to change the Bush administration's approach to Afghanistan.

"They don't want to see any changes because they still hope to present Afghanistan as a success story," Mr Vendrell said.


In 2002, we were being welcomed almost as liberators by the Afghans. Now we are being seen as a necessary evil...

Francesc Vendrell


Countering the Taleban

"We will need to wait, not for very long, for a new administration to be established and at that point we need to reveal our strategy, not only a US strategy but the overall strategy, because clearly what we are doing so far is not going to lead to success."

Mr Vendrell, a veteran Spanish diplomat, left the EU post in Afghanistan at the end of August.

"I don't leave with a sense of failure," he said.

"But I do leave with a sense of regret that we made so many mistakes. I don't believe the situation will lead to failure but we have got to do a hell of a lot to get things right."

Mr Vendrell added his voice to the criticism of civilian deaths in Afghanistan from aerial bombings. "It is doing us an enormous amount of harm with the public," he warned.

"In 2002, we were being welcomed almost as liberators by the Afghans. Now we are being seen as a necessary evil, perhaps something that they need to put up with because our departure would probably mean a civil war, but these kinds of actions completely undermine the efforts to win hearts and minds."

Mr Vendrell's successor as EU envoy to Afghanistan is the Italian diplomat, Ettore Francesco Sequi.

HARDtalk is broadcast on BBC World News at 03:30 GMT, 08:30 GMT, 14:30 GMT, 20:30 GMT and 22:30 GMT.

HARDtalk can also be seen on BBC News at 04:30 BST & 23:30 BST.

 

[muse]

Dissension in Pakistan's ranks
By Syed Saleem Shahzad

KARACHI - Al-Qaeda's grand strategy is based on a simple notion - given the American cowboy mentality, if the United States is confronted, it will react in an extreme manner.

Hence, with the small military successes of the Taliban in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda, through its media campaigns, has created a sense of American failures on the battlefield and challenged the ego of the world's superpower with its rhetoric.

The response of the George W Bush administration has been as expected, with a renewed effort to go after al-Qaeda in Pakistan's tribal areas, even at the cost of isolation within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and at the cost of alienating its frontline ally Pakistan, which is seriously divided over its role in prosecuting the "war on terror".

Islamabad was stunned by President George W Bush's speech at the US National Defense University on Tuesday in which he named Pakistan as one of the major battlegrounds in the fight against terrorism and that the US has stepped up raids into Pakistani territory from Afghanistan to attack militants.

On Wednesday there was another shock in the form of a detailed roadmap of American strategy outlined by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, during an address to the US Congress. The key element of this is the conviction that the only way to win in Afghanistan is to open a new war theater in Pakistan.

The speech was in fact a tacit admission of the failure in Afghanistan seven years after the Taliban were ousted, and Mullen conceded that the US was "running out of time" to win the war in Afghanistan and that simply sending in more troops would not guarantee victory.

"In my view, these two nations [Pakistan and Afghanistan] are inextricably linked in a common insurgency that crosses the border between them," he said, adding that he planned "to commission a new, more comprehensive strategy for the region, one that covers both sides of the border".

On Thursday, the US's all-weather partner, Britain, supported the US's recommendations, but NATO clarified its position that it had nothing to do with American policies and its mandate was restricted to the Afghan borders.

Bush is reported to have secretly approved orders in July allowing US special forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan, and the Pakistani leadership was taken on board. Pakistani ambassador to Washington Husain Haqqani assured the US that the Pakistan People's Party-led government would support the policy. This was further reinforced during Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gillani's visit to Washington.

Nevertheless, the issue has become a litmus test for the Pakistani security forces, which are now obliged to follow the US's dotted lines in conducting military operations in the tribal areas, despite the intense hostilities these create.

The latest offensive took place on Wednesday in Bajaur Agency on the border with Afghanistan this week where troops, supported by tanks and heavy artillery, are said by Pakistani officials to have killed 80 to 100 militants, including foreigners, with two soldiers killed. Militants use the tribal areas as bases for raids into Afghanistan. On Thursday, however, when the army sent in ground forces to secure the area, militants attacked their convoys and forced them back into their forts.

Pakistan's corps commanders began meetings on Thursday to discuss the situation. They realize they are unable to prevail against the militants in the long term, but they are under intense US pressure to act. Army chief Ashfaq Parvez Kiani has criticized the US over this, even though he is well briefed by the US on what is expected of Pakistan and of the US's cross-border intentions.

Kiani issued a statement saying that the rules of engagement with coalition forces were well defined and "within that, the right to conduct operations against the militants inside own territory is solely the responsibility of the respective armed forces".

"There is no question of any agreement or understanding with the coalition forces whereby they are allowed to conduct operations on our side of the border." Kiani said.

He referred to his meeting with senior US Army officers aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on August 27, saying they were informed about the complexity of the issue and that it required a deeper understanding and patience.

Kiani said he had impressed on the officers that "military action alone cannot solve the problem. Political reconciliatory efforts are required to go along with the military prong to win the hearts and minds of the people."

Kiani is making the correct noises, but one has to question his sincerity. This month, Pakistan announced that because of the US ground assault in South Waziristan, it was stopping NATO supplies at the Torkham border. But not only were NATO supplies allowed to continue into Afghanistan within a few hours, after two attacks on Pakistan by US Predator drones, Pakistan stayed silent. (Another drone attack on Friday in North Waziristan killed 12 people.)

Pakistan's corps commanders are clearly not convinced by Kiani's statements as they are the ones who have to send troops into the firing line, which is highly unpopular at the best of times.

The country has made a paradigm shift from Pervez Musharraf's seven years in charge as president and military chief. In his time, military operations were half-hearted and mainly targeted foreign elements such as Arabs and Uzbeks and Pakistan never discussed the Taliban and their Pakistani supporters.

The result was that the Taliban were able to establish a strong foothold in the tribal areas for their operations in Afghanistan, which is what upsets the US and NATO so much and which is why now they are forcing Pakistan to go directly after the Taliban and their supporters.

This week's operation in Bajaur was specifically aimed at clearing Taliban sanctuaries near the Afghan border. Over the past months, several thousand Taliban had assembled there in preparation for launches into Afghanistan and the last batch was about to go in the final phase of the spring offensive before the winter sets in.

Mullen explained this in his speech, "We can hunt down and kill extremists as they cross over the border from Pakistan, as I watched us do during a day-long trip to the Korengal Valley in July. But until we work more closely with the Pakistani government to eliminate the safe havens from which they operate, the enemy will only keep coming."

This America-Pakistan "joint venture" marks a new struggle in Pakistan which can only intensify when, for instance, US special forces launch more raids into Pakistan, conceivably as deep as the capital of North-West Frontier Province, Peshawar, to nab powerful Taliban commanders.

Much will depend on how the corps commanders react, given that they are aware that their chief (Kiani) and the political leadership have agreed, if only tacitly, to the "joint venture" with the US.

Kiani does not have a strong constituency in the military, as Musharraf did, and he might stand with his military commanders and decide on a policy to limit cooperation with the US in the "war on terror".

It is also possible, though, that he will stamp on opposition in the ranks and purge any corps commanders who disagree with the new policy, as Musharraf did after he stopped Pakistan's support of the Taliban following the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

His danger in siding with his commanders is that he will then be on a collision course with the powerful new president, Asif Ali Zardari, who has it in his powers to remove Kiani. Conversely, if Kiani purges the forces, he will have the full backing of Zardari.

In this delicate situation, the balance could be tipped by India, on US instigation, mobilizing forces on the Line of Control that separates the Indian- and Pakistan-administered sections of Kashmir, as happened in December 2001. And as happened then, Pakistan will be left with no option but to surrender to America's will in both letter and spirit.

Whichever way Kiani jumps, al-Qaeda has succeeded in goading the US into opening a third war theater beyond Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Alright, another one of the extremely 'civilized' guests from across the border has been dispatched with far greater civility than he could muster himself, and all his posts have been deleted, as have those posts that quoted him in response, since I want no sign of his hatred on this forum.

Using Logic Notes 'logic' (at one point) this would be an illustration of how the Indian government has brainwashed and indoctrinated its populace with hate and prejudice towards Pakistan.

 

[Neo]

Good job AM. Don't give these hindutva trolls any space, ban at first sight!

 

[Shoaib_Sham]

Good job AM. Don't give these hindutva trolls any space, ban at first sight!

He is AgNoStIc; rightly for sure

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

We are starting to see a trend here aren't we.

Musharraf was the 'cats meow' as far as the US was concerned, until the internal dynamics of Pakistan (political, ethnic, religious) and the external geo-political situation (India factor) stayed his hand as he sought to put 'Pakistan first' (shocking I know, how could the leader of a nation put his country first!).

So of course, comes the fall from grace - Musharraf goes from being an indispensable ally to skimming billions from the aid given to him and secretly abetting the Taliban.

After that we get Gen. Kiyani - the West is effusive in its praise - " a soldiers soldier, thorough professional, a moderate, understands the need for fighting the WoT, and places it as a priority higher than all others". But Gen. Kiyani refuses to mortgage his nation's sovereignty to the US, and guess what?

Aha, "Gen. Kiyani, for whatever otherworldly reason, was completely aware of the plot to bomb the Indian Embassy". No coincidence that this was released right after he strongly condemned the US raid into Pakistan.

And now we have the wheeling dealing Zardari - the poor widower, his wife was killed by extremists. He is surely dedicated and motivated to fighting this WoT, like the US wants, no, I mean in Pakistan's interests.

A cookie for whoever figures out how this latest saga will end.

My guess, the ISI and Army will become scapegoats fo whatever Zardari cannot deliver.

 

[batmannow]

We are starting to see a trend here aren't we.

Musharraf was the 'cats meow' as far as the US was concerned, until the internal dynamics of Pakistan (political, ethnic, religious) and the external geo-political situation (India factor) stayed his hand as he sought to put 'Pakistan first' (shocking I know, how could the leader of a nation put his country first!).

So of course, comes the fall from grace - Musharraf goes from being an indispensable ally to skimming billions from the aid given to him and secretly abetting the Taliban.

After that we get Gen. Kiyani - the West is effusive in its praise - " a soldiers soldier, thorough professional, a moderate, understands the need for fighting the WoT, and places it as a priority higher than all others". But Gen. Kiyani refuses to mortgage his nation's sovereignty to the US, and guess what?

Aha, "Gen. Kiyani, for whatever otherworldly reason, was completely aware of the plot to bomb the Indian Embassy". No coincidence that this was released right after he strongly condemned the US raid into Pakistan.

And now we have the wheeling dealing Zardari - the poor widower, his wife was killed by extremists. He is surely dedicated and motivated to fighting this WoT, like the US wants, no, I mean in Pakistan's interests.

A cookie for whoever figures out how this latest saga will end.

My guess, the ISI and Army will become scapegoats fo whatever Zardari cannot deliver.

To hell with the USA, just now got the news from dawn tv, that chinese spokesman, said in his briefing, that USA's attacks on pakistan were unjustifyed.....
I guss this is the time , that pakistani president should vist china, & to disscuss future co-opreation and make it further up.

 

[Spring Onion]

To hell with the USA, just now got the news from dawn tv, that chinese spokesman, said in his briefing, that USA's attacks on pakistan were unjustifyed.....
I guss this is the time , that pakistani president should vist china, & to disscuss future co-opreation and make it further up.

Earlier Chian also had warned US against carrying out Terrorism in Pakistan.

The Chines government mouth piece People's Daily had warned US to stop terrorism in Pakistan.

 

[batmannow]

Once again, CHINA had proved to be the best of friends pakistan have in the world. i guss our leadership,needs more focus on CHINA.
It is the best of the times that pakistan can form a GREATER ASIA alliance against USA+EU UNJUSTIFYED polices against the asian nations.
IRAN ,PAKISTAN,CHINA, RUSSIA can agree on some kind of joint defence & economic pact and, systmticly can go for greater role in world affairs.
But , for this all we need a very patriotic political leadership, which can bailout us from the AXIS OF THE IMPERIAL EVIL, i think we need to focus our thoughts in that direction?.......

 

[batmannow]

washingtonpost.com
DIRTY uncle sam!

U.S. Links 3 Chávez Aides to Guerrillas
Venezuelans Face Sanctions Over Ties to FARC In Colombia
By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, September 13, 2008;

BOGOTA, Colombia, Sept. 12 -- The United States on Friday accused three top aides to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez of helping Colombian guerrillas traffic in cocaine and battle the Colombian government, the first time the Bush administration has publicly outlined tight links between what it calls a terrorist group and the highest echelon of Venezuela's government.

Former interior minister Ramón Rodríguez Chacín and two leading intelligence officials helped the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia procure weapons in the group's effort to overthrow Colombian President Álvaro Uribe's U.S.-backed government, the U.S. Treasury Department said in a document placing sanctions on the three. The United States and Europe have blacklisted the FARC, as the rebel group is known, as a terrorist organization. The group is widely reviled in Colombia for carrying out kidnappings and assassinations.

The new move by the Bush administration signals a low point in relations between the administration and Chávez, who has used his nation's vast oil wealth to help political allies such as Cuba and, critics say, radical leftist groups across Latin America. The designation marks an escalation in the Bush administration's conflict with Chávez, whose country is a major source of U.S. oil imports, at a time when the firebrand populist has significant economic leverage because of high world petroleum prices. The ideological confrontation has rippled across the region.

The U.S. announcement came a day after Chávez recalled his ambassador in Washington, Bernardo Álvarez, and said American Ambassador Patrick Duddy had 72 hours to leave Venezuela. Chávez called his decision an act of solidarity with his ally in Bolivia, President Evo Morales, who on Wednesday ordered the expulsion of the U.S. ambassador in La Paz, Philip S. Goldberg, as his government faced rising unrest. Both South American leaders say the Bush administration is trying to foment turmoil, topple their governments and take over their countries' natural resources.

On Friday, the United States ordered Bolivian Ambassador Gustavo Guzmán to leave. Also on Friday, Honduras postponed the accreditation of the U.S. ambassador, in support of Venezuela and Bolivia.
Tensions in the Andes have been high all week, as protesters in Bolivia sacked buildings and damaged natural gas installations in a direct threat to Morales's government. On Friday, Bolivian media reported that more than 10 demonstrators were killed in Pando state in the north on Thursday. Meanwhile, in a throwback to the Cold War, two Russian strategic bombers arrived in Venezuela this week for what were called training exercises in the Caribbean.

Gen. Jesús González, commander of strategic operations for the Venezuelan armed forces, said in a hearing before Venezuela's National Assembly that the country was "under threat" and that the United States was behind a recent plot to assassinate Chávez.
The United States usually issues sober denials to the Venezuelan government's frequent declarations of U.S. plots. This time, Washington upped the ante.

"I think the United States just thought this was enough," said Myles Frechette, a former American diplomat who worked in Venezuela. "It's an appropriate move by the United States, saying this isn't just Colombia saying this, we have other sources, these guys are doing this stuff and it's time to focus on it."

In a statement issued Friday morning, Adam J. Szubin, director of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, said that the move, known as a designation, "exposes two senior Venezuelan government officials and one former official who armed, abetted and funded the FARC, even as it terrorized and kidnapped innocents."

Under the designation, any property that the three Venezuelans own in the United States would be frozen, and any American doing business with them could face criminal penalties.

U.S. officials said that Rodríguez Chacín, who resigned Monday from the Interior Ministry for what he called personal reasons, was the Venezuelan government's main weapons point man for the FARC, facilitating the sale of arms to the rebels. Colombian and American officials said Rodríguez Chacín frequently met with rebel commanders, particularly with two top leaders who are said to be in Venezuela, Luciano Marín, alias Iván Márquez, and Rodrigo Londoño, also known as Timochenko.
Dirty uncle sam's old dirty tricks?

September 13, 2008 Saturday Ramazan 12, 1429

Honduras president snubs US

TEGUCIGALPA, Sept 12: Honduras, a former US ally in Central America now run by a leftist government, told a US envoy not to present his credentials as ambassador on Friday in a diplomatic snub in support of Bolivia.

Bolivia and anti-US Venezue-lan President Hugo Chavez are in a fight with Washington over what they see as US support for violent protests against Bolivian President Evo Morales. Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, who has moved the country closer to Chavez, was due to receive a new US ambassador on Friday in a ceremony at which the envoy would present a letter with his diplomatic credentials.
But Zelaya temporarily put off the event in support of Bolivia, a government source said. “The government decided to temporarily suspend the reception of the new ambassador’s letter of credentials in solidarity with Bolivian President Evo Morales,” the source said.
The snub means that envoy Hugo Llorens is not officially US ambassador.
Bolivia and the United States expelled their respective ambassadors earlier this week after Morales accused Washington of supporting the opposition in the Andean country.—Reuters



Thats the way how can fight the menence of madness with unity!

 

[muse]

Readers will recall the shrill the politicians and democratic media of Pakistan maligned Pakistan Armed Forces when Gen. Pervaiz Musharraf sought to keep the American at bay. Not a day went by without them cursing at him, with editorials lambasting him --- But now it should be clear to all, it is the Politicians and the media that want the American forces in Pakistan.

You have read the editorial from DAWN newspaper, and you may wish to read todays editorial in TheNews international - you will note that the patriotic armed forces and the ISI are once again made scapegoats.

You may wonder where is JI or JUI or PML and PPP or that new Nawabzada, the playboy Imran Khan ? No one is paying, so they are taking their rest, even as they feed from the national treasury.

 

[Munir]

Pretty compleet report...

PECIAL REPORT: Pakistan Reverses 9/11 Appeasement



President Zardari has refused to publicly back the military’s warning to U.S. military. And instead of leaving for China as scheduled to garner support, he leaves for Britain. Even more stunning is Prime Minister Gilani’s statement [“We can’t wage war with U.S.”] which has damaged the psychological effect of army chief’s warning to the Americans. The truth comes out from the Governor of NWFP, whose office issued a statement saying, “while the coalition troops are threatening to extend their war to Pakistan, the militants are also attacking the country and creating a war-like situation. It appears that both forces were working on the same agenda to weaken Pakistan.” But despite the defeatist attitude of the elected government, Pakistan’s position is not weak. Islamabad has its options.”



By AHMED QURAISHI

Saturday, 13 September 2008.

Ahmed Quraishi-Pakistan/Middle East politics, Iraq war, lebanon war, India Pakistan relations



ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—One telephone call seven years ago was enough for Islamabad to accommodate Washington’s entire wish list. But United States pressure tactics will not work now. Pakistan’s army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, is leading a military and a nation that is determined to resist Washington’s plan to bring to Pakistan the ethno-civil wars of Iraq and Afghanistan.



Pakistani military’s brisk response is not just a reaction to the deliberately humiliating and outrageous unilateral American decisions to include Pakistan in the Iraq/Afghanistan war theater.



There is a bigger problem here. Pakistani policy analysts are convinced that United States has been a duplicitous ally during the past seven years, using the sincere Pakistani cooperation on Afghanistan to gradually turn that country into a military base to launch a sophisticated psychological, intelligence and military campaign to destabilize Pakistan itself.



The objective is to weaken the control of the Pakistani military over geographical Pakistan and ignite an ethnic and sectarian civil war leading to changing the status of Balochistan and NWFP, possibly even facilitate the break up of both provinces from the Pakistani federation.



The defeatist stance of Pakistan’s elected government in the face of U.S. belligerence is discussed later in this paper. But it is worth noting that President Zardari has refused to publicly back the military’s warning to U.S. He also delayed his China visit to go to London to hunker down with Gordon Brown. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Yousaf Reza Gilani, in a statement that deprives Pakistan of strategic advantage and dampens the psychological effect of army chief’s warning, has said that ‘Pakistan can’t wage war with U.S.’ In comparison, the governor of NWFP, Mr. Owais Ghani, has become the only government official to publicly state the truth.



On Sept. 12, the governor’s office issued the following statement: “Foreign forces based in Afghanistan and militants are working on the same anti-Pakistan agenda and both are following the same strategy to weaken the country […] while the coalition troops were threatening to extend their war to Pakistan, the militants are also attacking the country and creating a war-like situation. It appeared that both the forces were working on the same agenda to weaken Pakistan.”

(al qaeda and americans allied who would have thought we would see this day. it would have been funny if it wasnt so dangerous and sinister)


In one sign of the grand double game, despite the poor relations with Iran, Washington has encouraged Karzai and the Indians to complete the construction of a road that links Afghanistan to an Indian-built Iranian seaport. The purpose is to end the dependence of both U.S. army and the Karzai regime on Pakistan for access to sea(are the iranians in on it as well, i find that hard to believe). U.S. military officials have also been seeking permission to use Russian air space for military cargo to replace Pakistani facilities.



These American actions show a degree of long term planning and are not connected to the recent American grievances against Pakistan and its intelligence agencies.



A segment of the U.S. policy establishment had decided to take the war to Pakistan from the outset in 2001. Washington first used Islamabad to occupy Afghanistan and then used the Afghan soil to start series of insurgencies inside Pakistan. The strategy was an alternative to a direct confrontation with a nuclear-armed country. A weak Pakistani state with a neutered military was envisaged as an ideal situation to protect U.S. interests with regards to China, Russia and India.



It is not clear how much the rest of the departments of the U.S. government knew about the destabilization plans for Pakistan. If the entire U.S. political and military strategy on Pakistan since Sept. 11, 2001 was based on consensus, then Pakistanis have been massively deceived by their American allies.



The anti-Pakistan lobby in Washington found willing allies in the Indians and the Northern Alliance component of the Karzai regime in Kabul.



The idea to destabilize Pakistan appears to have started with simple and clear thoughts. The U.S.- and India-backed Kabul regime proposed reviving Pashtun nationalism and the secession of Pashtun regions from Pakistan. The Indians offered their decades-old experience in penetrating Pakistani territories for espionage. The Indians offered something else too: The revival of the so-called Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA). The Soviets and Indians together created this terrorist organization in the 1970s and used Afghan soil to foment an ethnic-based civil war inside Pakistan. The idea died out naturally, until the Indians offered the Americans to revive it after 9/11 as a punishment for Pakistan.


Pakistan’s tribal belt, Balochistan and Swat were peaceful until early 2005. Since then, series of insurgencies have erupted led by shady ethno-religious characters. One of them, a tribal thug who stayed in American and Karzai custody for several years, was released only to enter Pakistan and begin targeting Chinese citizens in the country. Another thug in Balochistan was convinced by handlers in Afghanistan that he would be made the head of an independent Balochistan with U.S. help if he agreed to launch an insurgency and help recruit young Pakistanis to get training to fight their own country.



Between 2005 and now, the entire western Pakistan from the Arabian Sea to the border with China has turned into a cocktail of ethnic and religious insurgencies focused on fighting the Pakistani state and the Pakistani military.



On July 12, 2008, when U.S. Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen and CIA Deputy Director Stephen R. Kappes were in Rawalpindi on a secret visit, Gen. Kayani, former President Musharraf and Pakistani intelligence officials confronted the American duo with conclusive evidence that showed U.S. complicity in feeding and sustaining a terrorist movement in Balochistan, where China is building a strategic seaport.



Pakistanis now also have damning evidence that shows that Karzai’s security apparatus, which is heavily infested with Indian security and intelligence advisers, has been directly supplying weapons and money to clusters of thugs masquerading as ‘Pakistani Taliban’.



The main assignment for these fake ‘Taliban’ is to target and kill Pakistanis – military and civilians – and kidnap Chinese citizens in Pakistan. Which is surprising because the Afghan Taliban, the real Taliban, are focused on targeting U.S. occupation forces in Afghanistan and not on spreading fear and chaos among Pakistanis. This is more like someone is trying to punish Pakistan through a planned effort.



In the latest incidents, over 25 worshippers perished when unknown terrorists lobbed hand grenades inside a mosque in northern Pakistan. The real Taliban would never indulge in such senseless violence targeting Pakistani citizens. Moreover, two Chinese engineers have been kidnapped. It is strange that the Chinese are the only foreigners being targeted in Pakistan, while citizens of United States and other NATO member countries are spared.



The de facto Pakistani interior minister, Rehman Malik, in an interview to CNN on Sept. 11, stopped short of accusing U.S. and India of using Afghan soil to target Pakistan. He said these unknown insurgents emerged from nowhere in 2005 and since then the quality of their weapons and equipment has dramatically improved. “Where are they getting support from? Not Pakistan,” he said.


Even if U.S. officials deny that parts of the U.S. government are privy to this destabilization effort, there is no question that the U.S. military is inexplicably ignoring the Karzai-Indian export of terrorism into Pakistan.



The U.S. role is certainly suspicious. Starting in early 2007, the U.S. media unleashed an organized demonization campaign against Pakistan that was unprecedented in the history of Pak-U.S. relations. U.S. media made a concerted effort to create world hostility against Pakistan and spread ‘anti-Pakistanism’ globally. Washington’s media managers were apparently trying to prepare the world public opinion for a possible American military intervention in Pakistan on the pretext of either saving the country’s nukes or to fight al-Qaeda.


Besides India, the United States is the only other country in the world busy in this deliberate creation of hostility against Pakistan. Take the example of this quote from an article that appeared in the conservative, pro-Bush magazine, The Weekly Standard, in Nov. 2007:



“A large number of ISI agents … should be thrown in jail or killed. What I think we should do in Pakistan is a parallel version of what Iran has run against us in Iraq: giving money [and] empowering [anti-state] actors. Some of this will involve working with some shady characters.”



On Feb. 1, 2008, New York Times, published an op-ed piece that discussed in detail the division of Pakistan into three independent states. The article was an example of malicious fear-mongering but the real surprise was that a prestigious paper carried it. NYT is the same paper that allowed itself to be used by Bush administration spin masters to promote fake stories about WMD and Iraq before U.S. invaded that country. Pakistan’s ace diplomat, Mr. Munir Akram, who has recently been removed by the Zardari government from his job as Pakistan’s envoy to the U.N., saw the NYT article and sent a letter to the paper’s editor, although it was not his job to do so but the responsibility of the press attaché in the Pakistan Embassy in Washington.



Mr. Akram wrote: “[The op-ed] will confirm the belief of many Pakistanis that there is an international conspiracy to destabilize and disintegrate Pakistan […] The orchestrated campaign against President Pervez Musharraf, the denigration of the Pakistani Army, calls for the capture of Pakistan’s nuclear assets, the string of suicide bombings and terrorism in Balochistan are all seen as aimed at this malevolent design.”



This American media campaign against Pakistan continues unabated. Last month, Mr. Harlan Ullman, a Washington columnist with strong ties to U.S. military, visited Islamabad and returned to float this stunning idea: “Pakistan should create integrated and joint operations centers at ISI or Army GHQ with U.S. military, State Department, law enforcement and intelligence officers in residence.”



This U.S. media campaign has been going hand in glove for the past eighteen months with a wave of terrorism inside Pakistan targeting Pakistani civilians and government. The blame for these acts was laid at the doors of something called ‘Pakistani Taliban’ which is, in major part, a creation of Indian and Karzai intelligence setups inside Afghanistan.



It is highly suspicious that U.S. military attacks inside Pakistan in recent weeks have targeted pro-Pakistan tribesmen. Somehow the U.S. drones and spy satellites are unable to target the shady rebel leaders who are exclusively fighting Pakistan and never attack U.S. soldiers across the border.



Also, the American war strategy neatly fits in with the secessionist campaign that seeks to turn Pakistani Pashtuns against their own country. With every U.S. attack that kills women and children, Pakistani Pashtun are becoming convinced that their country, Pakistan, is either unwilling or incapable of defending its citizens. The military operations conducted by Pakistani military to kill these shadowy terrorists are indirectly sending the message that Islamabad is also party to spilling Pashtun blood. All of this is strengthening the case of those who are promoting a secessionist propaganda that the NWFP and the Pashtun areas must secede from Pakistan.



This is the first time in decades that the idea of Pashtuns, the real liberators of Azad Kashmir, turning against Pakistan is appearing to be a possibility.



Military Speaks,

Politicians Silent



There is no question that Pakistan’ military waited for a cue from the country’s elected leadership to respond to U.S. violations of Pakistani territory.



On Sept. 6, marked as Pakistan Defense Day in memory of a failed Indian invasion of Pakistan in 1965, the Pakistani air force chief tried to send a message to the elected government. He told reporters that the Pakistani air force was ready to respond if the government made a policy decision.



The Zardari-Gilani government chose to ignore U.S. attacks. In fact, the defense minister, Mr. Ahmed Mukhtar, made statements on multiple occasions that raised eyebrows. At one point he said U.S. drones flew too high for Pakistani military to respond. At another point he justified U.S. attacks inside Pakistan by saying ‘there must be a reason’ for Washington to violate the border.



Then came Hamid Karzai to plant a misleading story in the Pakistani media when President Zardari invited him to his oath-taking ceremony on Sept. 9. After his arrival, Karzai called some journalists and leaked to them that Arabs were killed in the Sept. 8 U.S. attack on the house of the veteran Afghan commander Jalaluddin Haqqani in Miramshah.



This was a perfect justification for the violation of Pakistani territory and it helped the Americans tell their reluctant European allies that attacking Pakistan was justified. Karzai leaked the information, complete with names and numbers of the dead Arabs.



The sinister part of this exercise was that ‘sources close to the Haqqani family’ were cited to confirm the report. Major Pakistani news organizations picked up the story and made it their lead for several hours. This was the height of cynicism. The Haqqani family was in mourning, with several members of the family, women and children dead while a disinformation campaign was using their name to confirm the existence of foreign fighters in their house.


The truth was that Haqqani’s house was never a secret hideout. His family maintained a house in Pakistan since the 1980s. Haqqani lived and operated in Afghanistan and the people in the house where his extended family relatives, ordinary people with no link to the war in Afghanistan. This is like Afghan resistance groups deciding to target Mr. Karzai’s extended family members who have nothing to do with Karzai’s activities just to get back at him. The Afghan resistance has never done it. But Karzai and his American allies have no problem in resorting to this method.



The devastated Haqqani family corrected the story later and questioned the source of the story since there were no Arabs or foreign or any fighters at all in the house. The U.S. attack was a deliberate act of terrorism to cause maximum pain to the Afghan commander.



Pakistani military quietly watched the Zardari-Gilani government take no position on the U.S. attacks. Then came the bombshell when, last week, Bush and his military chief, Adm. Mullen, said Pakistan was now part of the Iraq-Afghanistan ‘war theater’ and New York Times published a leak that said Bush had authorized attacks inside Pakistan without Islamabad’s consent.



The purpose behind the leak was to put Pakistan on notice and somehow force the issue down on Islamabad in the hope that Pakistan will grudgingly accept it.



Zardari’s Strange

Silence



After Gen. Kayani’s tough-worded counter statement, an embarrassed Prime Minister Gilani said the statement reflected his government’s policy.



But the biggest question mark is the silence of President Zardari. He did not endorse Gen. Kayani’s statement. Even more shocking for Pakistanis was that Mr. Zardari reneged on his promise that China will be his first foreign visit as President. Instead he left for London after a call from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown ‘inviting’ him to London to discuss the new U.S. strategy.



It is clear that President Zardari supports the new U.S. policy and does not agree with the Pakistani military’s warning that it will defend against attacks on Pakistan’s at all costs.



Mr. Zardari is in power thanks to the arrangement – known as the ‘deal’ - that Washington and London forced Pakistan to accept. His assets are mostly in United States and Britain. There is no way he can risk alienating his backers.


The deal originally envisaged the return of Benazir Bhutto to power in Pakistan. Former President Musharraf was forced to – or he personally accepted to help – make Mrs. Bhutto the new prime minister. Mrs. Bhutto accepted U.S. help in bringing her back to power in return for her commitment that she will allow Washington to do all or most of the things that Musharraf was not willing to do: mainly permit U.S. boots on the ground in Pakistan.



There is every possibility that President Zardari has been convinced by close advisors, especially Ambassador Husain Haqqani in Washington, to tacitly accept U.S. operations inside Pakistan and not allow the Pakistani military to dictate its terms.



Ambassador Haqqani is strongly sympathetic to Washington’s position(practically their servant). Last year, he played a major role in convincing Benazir Bhutto to make public statements accepting U.S. boots on Pakistani soil and American access to Dr. A. Q. Khan. Before his present assignment, Mr. Haqqani has been closely linked to the same hawkish U.S. think tanks that are the biggest advocates of U.S. military intervention in Pakistan. The elected government’s soft position on U.S. attacks has a lot to do with the work of Ambassador Haqqani and another American figure—Zalmay Khalilzad, President Zardari’s ‘secret’ American adviser.



It is a foregone conclusion; based on Ambassador Haqqani’s intrusive record at the Pakistan Foreign Office in the past four months, that he has a direct link to the bizarre statement by Prime Minister Gilani [“Pakistan can’t wage war with U.S.”-Sept 12] and the series of statements made by Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar that justified U.S. attacks against Pakistan [“U.S. drones fly too high, we can’t attack them” and “If U.S. attacks, there must be a reason.”].



Pakistan’s Options



If Pakistani military tries to block U.S. military violations, there is a possibility of limited armed conflict between Pakistani and American soldiers on the Afghan border.



Gen. Kayani’s warning of retaliation did help NATO make a public statement that it does not share Washington’s idea of taking the war to Pakistan. However, no one in Islamabad is convinced that NATO will remain neutral in the event that U.S. military tries to engage Pakistan in a conflict.



In case of conflict, Washington is expected to signal to India to open a front in the east in order to divert Pakistani military resources. Intelligence assets that have been planted inside Pakistan with links in Afghanistan will be activated and will possibly try to ratchet up the campaign of public terror in order to spread chaos and exert pressure on Pakistan military. More Chinese targets can be attacked or killed in order to strain ties between Beijing and Islamabad.



But Pakistan is not without options. In fact, the Pakistani position is stronger than what it appears to be. Islamabad can activate old contacts with a resurgent and rising Afghan Taliban inside Afghanistan. The entire Pakistani tribal belt will seize this opportunity to fight the Americans. The attempts to divide Pakistanis along sectarian lines have failed and the Americans cannot expect to repeat what they did in Iraq in March 2003. Pakistanis will fight and resist. There is a possibility that Pakistani tribesmen could cross the border in large numbers using secret routes to dodge aerial bombardment and join the Afghan Taliban and find their way to Kabul.


The misguided ‘Pakistani Taliban’ who appear to be operating as an extension of U.S. military in Afghanistan will also come under pressure of the tribesmen and will be forced to target the occupation forces instead of fighting the Pakistani government.


Washington might be tempted by the idea of signaling to the Indians to engage Pakistan from the east. But the fact is that the Indian army has a dangerous rebellion on its hands in the valley. By opening a front with Pakistan, Indian soldiers will have to protect their front and rear simultaneously. The Pakistani military has contingency plans for dealing with hostilities on two fronts.


U.S. soldiers also will not have it easy if they enter a conflict. This is why the Americans are hoping they will scare Pakistanis into submission. Pakistan’s economic crisis is being exploited. Pakistani officials say that IMF and World Bank have received U.S. instructions to go hard on Pakistan. Washington is also trying to convince Gulf Arabs not to support Pakistan this time.



But the situation between Islamabad and Washington does not have to come to this. Islamabad can help tip the scales in Washington against the hawks who want a war with Pakistan. Not all parts of the U.S. government accept this idea and this must be exploited. Pakistan must make it clear that it will retaliate. Statements like that of Prime Minister Gilani must be stopped. His statement virtually damaged the psychological effect of army chief’s warning.


U.S. military posturing aside, Washington has recently seen a string of diplomatic defeats. Russia has cut American meddling in Georgia to size. In Iraq, a coalition of Shiite parties is forcing the Americans to leave the country. And both Bolivia and Venezuela have expelled U.S. ambassadors, and, in Bolivia’s case, the world has suddenly become alert to Washington’s intrusive meddling in that country’s domestic politics and the role of the U.S. ambassador in fueling separatism. Which is not very different from the U.S. role inside Pakistan, where U.S. diplomats have created political chaos by directly engaging the politicians, coupled with creating and feeding insurgencies to weaken the country.



The only way to entrap Pakistan now is to either orchestrate a spectacular terrorist attack in U.S. and blame it on Pakistan, or to assassinate a high profile personality inside Pakistan and generate domestic strife that will make it impossible for the military to resist U.S. attacks.



© 2007-2008. All rights reserved. AhmedQuraishi.com.

 

[Spring Onion]

Pretty compleet report...

PECIAL REPORT: Pakistan Reverses 9/11 Appeasement



President Zardari has refused to publicly back the military’s warning to U.S. military. And instead of leaving for China as scheduled to garner support, he leaves for Britain. Even more stunning is Prime Minister Gilani’s statement [“We can’t wage war with U.S.”] which has damaged the psychological effect of army chief’s warning to the Americans. The truth comes out from the Governor of NWFP, whose office issued a statement saying, “while the coalition troops are threatening to extend their war to Pakistan, the militants are also attacking the country and creating a war-like situation. It appears that both forces were working on the same agenda to weaken Pakistan.” But despite the defeatist attitude of the elected government, Pakistan’s position is not weak. Islamabad has its options.”



By AHMED QURAISHI

Saturday, 13 September 2008.

Ahmed Quraishi-Pakistan/Middle East politics, Iraq war, lebanon war, India Pakistan relations



ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—One telephone call seven years ago was enough for Islamabad to accommodate Washington’s entire wish list. But United States pressure tactics will not work now. Pakistan’s army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, is leading a military and a nation that is determined to resist Washington’s plan to bring to Pakistan the ethno-civil wars of Iraq and Afghanistan.



Pakistani military’s brisk response is not just a reaction to the deliberately humiliating and outrageous unilateral American decisions to include Pakistan in the Iraq/Afghanistan war theater.



There is a bigger problem here. Pakistani policy analysts are convinced that United States has been a duplicitous ally during the past seven years, using the sincere Pakistani cooperation on Afghanistan to gradually turn that country into a military base to launch a sophisticated psychological, intelligence and military campaign to destabilize Pakistan itself.



The objective is to weaken the control of the Pakistani military over geographical Pakistan and ignite an ethnic and sectarian civil war leading to changing the status of Balochistan and NWFP, possibly even facilitate the break up of both provinces from the Pakistani federation.



The defeatist stance of Pakistan’s elected government in the face of U.S. belligerence is discussed later in this paper. But it is worth noting that President Zardari has refused to publicly back the military’s warning to U.S. He also delayed his China visit to go to London to hunker down with Gordon Brown. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Yousaf Reza Gilani, in a statement that deprives Pakistan of strategic advantage and dampens the psychological effect of army chief’s warning, has said that ‘Pakistan can’t wage war with U.S.’ In comparison, the governor of NWFP, Mr. Owais Ghani, has become the only government official to publicly state the truth.



On Sept. 12, the governor’s office issued the following statement: “Foreign forces based in Afghanistan and militants are working on the same anti-Pakistan agenda and both are following the same strategy to weaken the country […] while the coalition troops were threatening to extend their war to Pakistan, the militants are also attacking the country and creating a war-like situation. It appeared that both the forces were working on the same agenda to weaken Pakistan.”

(al qaeda and americans allied who would have thought we would see this day. it would have been funny if it wasnt so dangerous and sinister)


In one sign of the grand double game, despite the poor relations with Iran, Washington has encouraged Karzai and the Indians to complete the construction of a road that links Afghanistan to an Indian-built Iranian seaport. The purpose is to end the dependence of both U.S. army and the Karzai regime on Pakistan for access to sea(are the iranians in on it as well, i find that hard to believe). U.S. military officials have also been seeking permission to use Russian air space for military cargo to replace Pakistani facilities.



These American actions show a degree of long term planning and are not connected to the recent American grievances against Pakistan and its intelligence agencies.



A segment of the U.S. policy establishment had decided to take the war to Pakistan from the outset in 2001. Washington first used Islamabad to occupy Afghanistan and then used the Afghan soil to start series of insurgencies inside Pakistan. The strategy was an alternative to a direct confrontation with a nuclear-armed country. A weak Pakistani state with a neutered military was envisaged as an ideal situation to protect U.S. interests with regards to China, Russia and India.



It is not clear how much the rest of the departments of the U.S. government knew about the destabilization plans for Pakistan. If the entire U.S. political and military strategy on Pakistan since Sept. 11, 2001 was based on consensus, then Pakistanis have been massively deceived by their American allies.



The anti-Pakistan lobby in Washington found willing allies in the Indians and the Northern Alliance component of the Karzai regime in Kabul.



The idea to destabilize Pakistan appears to have started with simple and clear thoughts. The U.S.- and India-backed Kabul regime proposed reviving Pashtun nationalism and the secession of Pashtun regions from Pakistan. The Indians offered their decades-old experience in penetrating Pakistani territories for espionage. The Indians offered something else too: The revival of the so-called Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA). The Soviets and Indians together created this terrorist organization in the 1970s and used Afghan soil to foment an ethnic-based civil war inside Pakistan. The idea died out naturally, until the Indians offered the Americans to revive it after 9/11 as a punishment for Pakistan.


Pakistan’s tribal belt, Balochistan and Swat were peaceful until early 2005. Since then, series of insurgencies have erupted led by shady ethno-religious characters. One of them, a tribal thug who stayed in American and Karzai custody for several years, was released only to enter Pakistan and begin targeting Chinese citizens in the country. Another thug in Balochistan was convinced by handlers in Afghanistan that he would be made the head of an independent Balochistan with U.S. help if he agreed to launch an insurgency and help recruit young Pakistanis to get training to fight their own country.



Between 2005 and now, the entire western Pakistan from the Arabian Sea to the border with China has turned into a cocktail of ethnic and religious insurgencies focused on fighting the Pakistani state and the Pakistani military.



On July 12, 2008, when U.S. Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen and CIA Deputy Director Stephen R. Kappes were in Rawalpindi on a secret visit, Gen. Kayani, former President Musharraf and Pakistani intelligence officials confronted the American duo with conclusive evidence that showed U.S. complicity in feeding and sustaining a terrorist movement in Balochistan, where China is building a strategic seaport.



Pakistanis now also have damning evidence that shows that Karzai’s security apparatus, which is heavily infested with Indian security and intelligence advisers, has been directly supplying weapons and money to clusters of thugs masquerading as ‘Pakistani Taliban’.



The main assignment for these fake ‘Taliban’ is to target and kill Pakistanis – military and civilians – and kidnap Chinese citizens in Pakistan. Which is surprising because the Afghan Taliban, the real Taliban, are focused on targeting U.S. occupation forces in Afghanistan and not on spreading fear and chaos among Pakistanis. This is more like someone is trying to punish Pakistan through a planned effort.



In the latest incidents, over 25 worshippers perished when unknown terrorists lobbed hand grenades inside a mosque in northern Pakistan. The real Taliban would never indulge in such senseless violence targeting Pakistani citizens. Moreover, two Chinese engineers have been kidnapped. It is strange that the Chinese are the only foreigners being targeted in Pakistan, while citizens of United States and other NATO member countries are spared.



The de facto Pakistani interior minister, Rehman Malik, in an interview to CNN on Sept. 11, stopped short of accusing U.S. and India of using Afghan soil to target Pakistan. He said these unknown insurgents emerged from nowhere in 2005 and since then the quality of their weapons and equipment has dramatically improved. “Where are they getting support from? Not Pakistan,” he said.


Even if U.S. officials deny that parts of the U.S. government are privy to this destabilization effort, there is no question that the U.S. military is inexplicably ignoring the Karzai-Indian export of terrorism into Pakistan.



The U.S. role is certainly suspicious. Starting in early 2007, the U.S. media unleashed an organized demonization campaign against Pakistan that was unprecedented in the history of Pak-U.S. relations. U.S. media made a concerted effort to create world hostility against Pakistan and spread ‘anti-Pakistanism’ globally. Washington’s media managers were apparently trying to prepare the world public opinion for a possible American military intervention in Pakistan on the pretext of either saving the country’s nukes or to fight al-Qaeda.


Besides India, the United States is the only other country in the world busy in this deliberate creation of hostility against Pakistan. Take the example of this quote from an article that appeared in the conservative, pro-Bush magazine, The Weekly Standard, in Nov. 2007:



“A large number of ISI agents … should be thrown in jail or killed. What I think we should do in Pakistan is a parallel version of what Iran has run against us in Iraq: giving money [and] empowering [anti-state] actors. Some of this will involve working with some shady characters.”



On Feb. 1, 2008, New York Times, published an op-ed piece that discussed in detail the division of Pakistan into three independent states. The article was an example of malicious fear-mongering but the real surprise was that a prestigious paper carried it. NYT is the same paper that allowed itself to be used by Bush administration spin masters to promote fake stories about WMD and Iraq before U.S. invaded that country. Pakistan’s ace diplomat, Mr. Munir Akram, who has recently been removed by the Zardari government from his job as Pakistan’s envoy to the U.N., saw the NYT article and sent a letter to the paper’s editor, although it was not his job to do so but the responsibility of the press attaché in the Pakistan Embassy in Washington.



Mr. Akram wrote: “[The op-ed] will confirm the belief of many Pakistanis that there is an international conspiracy to destabilize and disintegrate Pakistan […] The orchestrated campaign against President Pervez Musharraf, the denigration of the Pakistani Army, calls for the capture of Pakistan’s nuclear assets, the string of suicide bombings and terrorism in Balochistan are all seen as aimed at this malevolent design.”



This American media campaign against Pakistan continues unabated. Last month, Mr. Harlan Ullman, a Washington columnist with strong ties to U.S. military, visited Islamabad and returned to float this stunning idea: “Pakistan should create integrated and joint operations centers at ISI or Army GHQ with U.S. military, State Department, law enforcement and intelligence officers in residence.”



This U.S. media campaign has been going hand in glove for the past eighteen months with a wave of terrorism inside Pakistan targeting Pakistani civilians and government. The blame for these acts was laid at the doors of something called ‘Pakistani Taliban’ which is, in major part, a creation of Indian and Karzai intelligence setups inside Afghanistan.



It is highly suspicious that U.S. military attacks inside Pakistan in recent weeks have targeted pro-Pakistan tribesmen. Somehow the U.S. drones and spy satellites are unable to target the shady rebel leaders who are exclusively fighting Pakistan and never attack U.S. soldiers across the border.



Also, the American war strategy neatly fits in with the secessionist campaign that seeks to turn Pakistani Pashtuns against their own country. With every U.S. attack that kills women and children, Pakistani Pashtun are becoming convinced that their country, Pakistan, is either unwilling or incapable of defending its citizens. The military operations conducted by Pakistani military to kill these shadowy terrorists are indirectly sending the message that Islamabad is also party to spilling Pashtun blood. All of this is strengthening the case of those who are promoting a secessionist propaganda that the NWFP and the Pashtun areas must secede from Pakistan.



This is the first time in decades that the idea of Pashtuns, the real liberators of Azad Kashmir, turning against Pakistan is appearing to be a possibility.



Military Speaks,

Politicians Silent



There is no question that Pakistan’ military waited for a cue from the country’s elected leadership to respond to U.S. violations of Pakistani territory.



On Sept. 6, marked as Pakistan Defense Day in memory of a failed Indian invasion of Pakistan in 1965, the Pakistani air force chief tried to send a message to the elected government. He told reporters that the Pakistani air force was ready to respond if the government made a policy decision.



The Zardari-Gilani government chose to ignore U.S. attacks. In fact, the defense minister, Mr. Ahmed Mukhtar, made statements on multiple occasions that raised eyebrows. At one point he said U.S. drones flew too high for Pakistani military to respond. At another point he justified U.S. attacks inside Pakistan by saying ‘there must be a reason’ for Washington to violate the border.



Then came Hamid Karzai to plant a misleading story in the Pakistani media when President Zardari invited him to his oath-taking ceremony on Sept. 9. After his arrival, Karzai called some journalists and leaked to them that Arabs were killed in the Sept. 8 U.S. attack on the house of the veteran Afghan commander Jalaluddin Haqqani in Miramshah.



This was a perfect justification for the violation of Pakistani territory and it helped the Americans tell their reluctant European allies that attacking Pakistan was justified. Karzai leaked the information, complete with names and numbers of the dead Arabs.



The sinister part of this exercise was that ‘sources close to the Haqqani family’ were cited to confirm the report. Major Pakistani news organizations picked up the story and made it their lead for several hours. This was the height of cynicism. The Haqqani family was in mourning, with several members of the family, women and children dead while a disinformation campaign was using their name to confirm the existence of foreign fighters in their house.


The truth was that Haqqani’s house was never a secret hideout. His family maintained a house in Pakistan since the 1980s. Haqqani lived and operated in Afghanistan and the people in the house where his extended family relatives, ordinary people with no link to the war in Afghanistan. This is like Afghan resistance groups deciding to target Mr. Karzai’s extended family members who have nothing to do with Karzai’s activities just to get back at him. The Afghan resistance has never done it. But Karzai and his American allies have no problem in resorting to this method.



The devastated Haqqani family corrected the story later and questioned the source of the story since there were no Arabs or foreign or any fighters at all in the house. The U.S. attack was a deliberate act of terrorism to cause maximum pain to the Afghan commander.



Pakistani military quietly watched the Zardari-Gilani government take no position on the U.S. attacks. Then came the bombshell when, last week, Bush and his military chief, Adm. Mullen, said Pakistan was now part of the Iraq-Afghanistan ‘war theater’ and New York Times published a leak that said Bush had authorized attacks inside Pakistan without Islamabad’s consent.



The purpose behind the leak was to put Pakistan on notice and somehow force the issue down on Islamabad in the hope that Pakistan will grudgingly accept it.



Zardari’s Strange

Silence



After Gen. Kayani’s tough-worded counter statement, an embarrassed Prime Minister Gilani said the statement reflected his government’s policy.



But the biggest question mark is the silence of President Zardari. He did not endorse Gen. Kayani’s statement. Even more shocking for Pakistanis was that Mr. Zardari reneged on his promise that China will be his first foreign visit as President. Instead he left for London after a call from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown ‘inviting’ him to London to discuss the new U.S. strategy.



It is clear that President Zardari supports the new U.S. policy and does not agree with the Pakistani military’s warning that it will defend against attacks on Pakistan’s at all costs.



Mr. Zardari is in power thanks to the arrangement – known as the ‘deal’ - that Washington and London forced Pakistan to accept. His assets are mostly in United States and Britain. There is no way he can risk alienating his backers.


The deal originally envisaged the return of Benazir Bhutto to power in Pakistan. Former President Musharraf was forced to – or he personally accepted to help – make Mrs. Bhutto the new prime minister. Mrs. Bhutto accepted U.S. help in bringing her back to power in return for her commitment that she will allow Washington to do all or most of the things that Musharraf was not willing to do: mainly permit U.S. boots on the ground in Pakistan.



There is every possibility that President Zardari has been convinced by close advisors, especially Ambassador Husain Haqqani in Washington, to tacitly accept U.S. operations inside Pakistan and not allow the Pakistani military to dictate its terms.



Ambassador Haqqani is strongly sympathetic to Washington’s position(practically their servant). Last year, he played a major role in convincing Benazir Bhutto to make public statements accepting U.S. boots on Pakistani soil and American access to Dr. A. Q. Khan. Before his present assignment, Mr. Haqqani has been closely linked to the same hawkish U.S. think tanks that are the biggest advocates of U.S. military intervention in Pakistan. The elected government’s soft position on U.S. attacks has a lot to do with the work of Ambassador Haqqani and another American figure—Zalmay Khalilzad, President Zardari’s ‘secret’ American adviser.



It is a foregone conclusion; based on Ambassador Haqqani’s intrusive record at the Pakistan Foreign Office in the past four months, that he has a direct link to the bizarre statement by Prime Minister Gilani [“Pakistan can’t wage war with U.S.”-Sept 12] and the series of statements made by Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar that justified U.S. attacks against Pakistan [“U.S. drones fly too high, we can’t attack them” and “If U.S. attacks, there must be a reason.”].



Pakistan’s Options



If Pakistani military tries to block U.S. military violations, there is a possibility of limited armed conflict between Pakistani and American soldiers on the Afghan border.



Gen. Kayani’s warning of retaliation did help NATO make a public statement that it does not share Washington’s idea of taking the war to Pakistan. However, no one in Islamabad is convinced that NATO will remain neutral in the event that U.S. military tries to engage Pakistan in a conflict.



In case of conflict, Washington is expected to signal to India to open a front in the east in order to divert Pakistani military resources. Intelligence assets that have been planted inside Pakistan with links in Afghanistan will be activated and will possibly try to ratchet up the campaign of public terror in order to spread chaos and exert pressure on Pakistan military. More Chinese targets can be attacked or killed in order to strain ties between Beijing and Islamabad.



But Pakistan is not without options. In fact, the Pakistani position is stronger than what it appears to be. Islamabad can activate old contacts with a resurgent and rising Afghan Taliban inside Afghanistan. The entire Pakistani tribal belt will seize this opportunity to fight the Americans. The attempts to divide Pakistanis along sectarian lines have failed and the Americans cannot expect to repeat what they did in Iraq in March 2003. Pakistanis will fight and resist. There is a possibility that Pakistani tribesmen could cross the border in large numbers using secret routes to dodge aerial bombardment and join the Afghan Taliban and find their way to Kabul.


The misguided ‘Pakistani Taliban’ who appear to be operating as an extension of U.S. military in Afghanistan will also come under pressure of the tribesmen and will be forced to target the occupation forces instead of fighting the Pakistani government.


Washington might be tempted by the idea of signaling to the Indians to engage Pakistan from the east. But the fact is that the Indian army has a dangerous rebellion on its hands in the valley. By opening a front with Pakistan, Indian soldiers will have to protect their front and rear simultaneously. The Pakistani military has contingency plans for dealing with hostilities on two fronts.


U.S. soldiers also will not have it easy if they enter a conflict. This is why the Americans are hoping they will scare Pakistanis into submission. Pakistan’s economic crisis is being exploited. Pakistani officials say that IMF and World Bank have received U.S. instructions to go hard on Pakistan. Washington is also trying to convince Gulf Arabs not to support Pakistan this time.



But the situation between Islamabad and Washington does not have to come to this. Islamabad can help tip the scales in Washington against the hawks who want a war with Pakistan. Not all parts of the U.S. government accept this idea and this must be exploited. Pakistan must make it clear that it will retaliate. Statements like that of Prime Minister Gilani must be stopped. His statement virtually damaged the psychological effect of army chief’s warning.


U.S. military posturing aside, Washington has recently seen a string of diplomatic defeats. Russia has cut American meddling in Georgia to size. In Iraq, a coalition of Shiite parties is forcing the Americans to leave the country. And both Bolivia and Venezuela have expelled U.S. ambassadors, and, in Bolivia’s case, the world has suddenly become alert to Washington’s intrusive meddling in that country’s domestic politics and the role of the U.S. ambassador in fueling separatism. Which is not very different from the U.S. role inside Pakistan, where U.S. diplomats have created political chaos by directly engaging the politicians, coupled with creating and feeding insurgencies to weaken the country.



The only way to entrap Pakistan now is to either orchestrate a spectacular terrorist attack in U.S. and blame it on Pakistan, or to assassinate a high profile personality inside Pakistan and generate domestic strife that will make it impossible for the military to resist U.S. attacks.



© 2007-2008. All rights reserved. AhmedQuraishi.com.

If still some people rub their donkas with zardari for personal gains.
Sham on them..

when they are going to open their eyes.

 

[T-Rex]

By AHMED QURAISHI

Saturday, 13 September 2008.

Ahmed Quraishi-Pakistan/Middle East politics, Iraq war, lebanon war, India Pakistan relations



ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—One telephone call seven years ago was enough for Islamabad to accommodate Washington’s entire wish list. But United States pressure tactics will not work now. Pakistan’s army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, is leading a military and a nation that is determined to resist Washington’s plan to bring to Pakistan the ethno-civil wars of Iraq and Afghanistan.



Pakistani military’s brisk response is not just a reaction to the deliberately humiliating and outrageous unilateral American decisions to include Pakistan in the Iraq/Afghanistan war theater.



There is a bigger problem here. Pakistani policy analysts are convinced that United States has been a duplicitous ally during the past seven years, using the sincere Pakistani cooperation on Afghanistan to gradually turn that country into a military base to launch a sophisticated psychological, intelligence and military campaign to destabilize Pakistan itself.



The objective is to weaken the control of the Pakistani military over geographical Pakistan and ignite an ethnic and sectarian civil war leading to changing the status of Balochistan and NWFP, possibly even facilitate the break up of both provinces from the Pakistani federation.



The defeatist stance of Pakistan’s elected government in the face of U.S. belligerence is discussed later in this paper. But it is worth noting that President Zardari has refused to publicly back the military’s warning to U.S. He also delayed his China visit to go to London to hunker down with Gordon Brown. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Yousaf Reza Gilani, in a statement that deprives Pakistan of strategic advantage and dampens the psychological effect of army chief’s warning, has said that ‘Pakistan can’t wage war with U.S.’ In comparison, the governor of NWFP, Mr. Owais Ghani, has become the only government official to publicly state the truth.



On Sept. 12, the governor’s office issued the following statement: “Foreign forces based in Afghanistan and militants are working on the same anti-Pakistan agenda and both are following the same strategy to weaken the country […] while the coalition troops were threatening to extend their war to Pakistan, the militants are also attacking the country and creating a war-like situation. It appeared that both the forces were working on the same agenda to weaken Pakistan.”

(al qaeda and americans allied who would have thought we would see this day. it would have been funny if it wasnt so dangerous and sinister)


In one sign of the grand double game, despite the poor relations with Iran, Washington has encouraged Karzai and the Indians to complete the construction of a road that links Afghanistan to an Indian-built Iranian seaport. The purpose is to end the dependence of both U.S. army and the Karzai regime on Pakistan for access to sea(are the iranians in on it as well, i find that hard to believe). U.S. military officials have also been seeking permission to use Russian air space for military cargo to replace Pakistani facilities.



These American actions show a degree of long term planning and are not connected to the recent American grievances against Pakistan and its intelligence agencies.



A segment of the U.S. policy establishment had decided to take the war to Pakistan from the outset in 2001. Washington first used Islamabad to occupy Afghanistan and then used the Afghan soil to start series of insurgencies inside Pakistan. The strategy was an alternative to a direct confrontation with a nuclear-armed country. A weak Pakistani state with a neutered military was envisaged as an ideal situation to protect U.S. interests with regards to China, Russia and India.



It is not clear how much the rest of the departments of the U.S. government knew about the destabilization plans for Pakistan. If the entire U.S. political and military strategy on Pakistan since Sept. 11, 2001 was based on consensus, then Pakistanis have been massively deceived by their American allies.



The anti-Pakistan lobby in Washington found willing allies in the Indians and the Northern Alliance component of the Karzai regime in Kabul.



The idea to destabilize Pakistan appears to have started with simple and clear thoughts. The U.S.- and India-backed Kabul regime proposed reviving Pashtun nationalism and the secession of Pashtun regions from Pakistan. The Indians offered their decades-old experience in penetrating Pakistani territories for espionage. The Indians offered something else too: The revival of the so-called Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA). The Soviets and Indians together created this terrorist organization in the 1970s and used Afghan soil to foment an ethnic-based civil war inside Pakistan. The idea died out naturally, until the Indians offered the Americans to revive it after 9/11 as a punishment for Pakistan.


Pakistan’s tribal belt, Balochistan and Swat were peaceful until early 2005. Since then, series of insurgencies have erupted led by shady ethno-religious characters. One of them, a tribal thug who stayed in American and Karzai custody for several years, was released only to enter Pakistan and begin targeting Chinese citizens in the country. Another thug in Balochistan was convinced by handlers in Afghanistan that he would be made the head of an independent Balochistan with U.S. help if he agreed to launch an insurgency and help recruit young Pakistanis to get training to fight their own country.



Between 2005 and now, the entire western Pakistan from the Arabian Sea to the border with China has turned into a cocktail of ethnic and religious insurgencies focused on fighting the Pakistani state and the Pakistani military.



On July 12, 2008, when U.S. Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen and CIA Deputy Director Stephen R. Kappes were in Rawalpindi on a secret visit, Gen. Kayani, former President Musharraf and Pakistani intelligence officials confronted the American duo with conclusive evidence that showed U.S. complicity in feeding and sustaining a terrorist movement in Balochistan, where China is building a strategic seaport.



Pakistanis now also have damning evidence that shows that Karzai’s security apparatus, which is heavily infested with Indian security and intelligence advisers, has been directly supplying weapons and money to clusters of thugs masquerading as ‘Pakistani Taliban’.



The main assignment for these fake ‘Taliban’ is to target and kill Pakistanis – military and civilians – and kidnap Chinese citizens in Pakistan. Which is surprising because the Afghan Taliban, the real Taliban, are focused on targeting U.S. occupation forces in Afghanistan and not on spreading fear and chaos among Pakistanis. This is more like someone is trying to punish Pakistan through a planned effort.



In the latest incidents, over 25 worshippers perished when unknown terrorists lobbed hand grenades inside a mosque in northern Pakistan. The real Taliban would never indulge in such senseless violence targeting Pakistani citizens. Moreover, two Chinese engineers have been kidnapped. It is strange that the Chinese are the only foreigners being targeted in Pakistan, while citizens of United States and other NATO member countries are spared.



The de facto Pakistani interior minister, Rehman Malik, in an interview to CNN on Sept. 11, stopped short of accusing U.S. and India of using Afghan soil to target Pakistan. He said these unknown insurgents emerged from nowhere in 2005 and since then the quality of their weapons and equipment has dramatically improved. “Where are they getting support from? Not Pakistan,” he said.


Even if U.S. officials deny that parts of the U.S. government are privy to this destabilization effort, there is no question that the U.S. military is inexplicably ignoring the Karzai-Indian export of terrorism into Pakistan.



The U.S. role is certainly suspicious. Starting in early 2007, the U.S. media unleashed an organized demonization campaign against Pakistan that was unprecedented in the history of Pak-U.S. relations. U.S. media made a concerted effort to create world hostility against Pakistan and spread ‘anti-Pakistanism’ globally. Washington’s media managers were apparently trying to prepare the world public opinion for a possible American military intervention in Pakistan on the pretext of either saving the country’s nukes or to fight al-Qaeda.


Besides India, the United States is the only other country in the world busy in this deliberate creation of hostility against Pakistan. Take the example of this quote from an article that appeared in the conservative, pro-Bush magazine, The Weekly Standard, in Nov. 2007:



“A large number of ISI agents … should be thrown in jail or killed. What I think we should do in Pakistan is a parallel version of what Iran has run against us in Iraq: giving money [and] empowering [anti-state] actors. Some of this will involve working with some shady characters.”



On Feb. 1, 2008, New York Times, published an op-ed piece that discussed in detail the division of Pakistan into three independent states. The article was an example of malicious fear-mongering but the real surprise was that a prestigious paper carried it. NYT is the same paper that allowed itself to be used by Bush administration spin masters to promote fake stories about WMD and Iraq before U.S. invaded that country. Pakistan’s ace diplomat, Mr. Munir Akram, who has recently been removed by the Zardari government from his job as Pakistan’s envoy to the U.N., saw the NYT article and sent a letter to the paper’s editor, although it was not his job to do so but the responsibility of the press attaché in the Pakistan Embassy in Washington.



Mr. Akram wrote: “[The op-ed] will confirm the belief of many Pakistanis that there is an international conspiracy to destabilize and disintegrate Pakistan […] The orchestrated campaign against President Pervez Musharraf, the denigration of the Pakistani Army, calls for the capture of Pakistan’s nuclear assets, the string of suicide bombings and terrorism in Balochistan are all seen as aimed at this malevolent design.”



This American media campaign against Pakistan continues unabated. Last month, Mr. Harlan Ullman, a Washington columnist with strong ties to U.S. military, visited Islamabad and returned to float this stunning idea: “Pakistan should create integrated and joint operations centers at ISI or Army GHQ with U.S. military, State Department, law enforcement and intelligence officers in residence.”



This U.S. media campaign has been going hand in glove for the past eighteen months with a wave of terrorism inside Pakistan targeting Pakistani civilians and government. The blame for these acts was laid at the doors of something called ‘Pakistani Taliban’ which is, in major part, a creation of Indian and Karzai intelligence setups inside Afghanistan.



It is highly suspicious that U.S. military attacks inside Pakistan in recent weeks have targeted pro-Pakistan tribesmen. Somehow the U.S. drones and spy satellites are unable to target the shady rebel leaders who are exclusively fighting Pakistan and never attack U.S. soldiers across the border.



Also, the American war strategy neatly fits in with the secessionist campaign that seeks to turn Pakistani Pashtuns against their own country. With every U.S. attack that kills women and children, Pakistani Pashtun are becoming convinced that their country, Pakistan, is either unwilling or incapable of defending its citizens. The military operations conducted by Pakistani military to kill these shadowy terrorists are indirectly sending the message that Islamabad is also party to spilling Pashtun blood. All of this is strengthening the case of those who are promoting a secessionist propaganda that the NWFP and the Pashtun areas must secede from Pakistan.



This is the first time in decades that the idea of Pashtuns, the real liberators of Azad Kashmir, turning against Pakistan is appearing to be a possibility.



Military Speaks,

Politicians Silent



There is no question that Pakistan’ military waited for a cue from the country’s elected leadership to respond to U.S. violations of Pakistani territory.



On Sept. 6, marked as Pakistan Defense Day in memory of a failed Indian invasion of Pakistan in 1965, the Pakistani air force chief tried to send a message to the elected government. He told reporters that the Pakistani air force was ready to respond if the government made a policy decision.



The Zardari-Gilani government chose to ignore U.S. attacks. In fact, the defense minister, Mr. Ahmed Mukhtar, made statements on multiple occasions that raised eyebrows. At one point he said U.S. drones flew too high for Pakistani military to respond. At another point he justified U.S. attacks inside Pakistan by saying ‘there must be a reason’ for Washington to violate the border.



Then came Hamid Karzai to plant a misleading story in the Pakistani media when President Zardari invited him to his oath-taking ceremony on Sept. 9. After his arrival, Karzai called some journalists and leaked to them that Arabs were killed in the Sept. 8 U.S. attack on the house of the veteran Afghan commander Jalaluddin Haqqani in Miramshah.



This was a perfect justification for the violation of Pakistani territory and it helped the Americans tell their reluctant European allies that attacking Pakistan was justified. Karzai leaked the information, complete with names and numbers of the dead Arabs.



The sinister part of this exercise was that ‘sources close to the Haqqani family’ were cited to confirm the report. Major Pakistani news organizations picked up the story and made it their lead for several hours. This was the height of cynicism. The Haqqani family was in mourning, with several members of the family, women and children dead while a disinformation campaign was using their name to confirm the existence of foreign fighters in their house.


The truth was that Haqqani’s house was never a secret hideout. His family maintained a house in Pakistan since the 1980s. Haqqani lived and operated in Afghanistan and the people in the house where his extended family relatives, ordinary people with no link to the war in Afghanistan. This is like Afghan resistance groups deciding to target Mr. Karzai’s extended family members who have nothing to do with Karzai’s activities just to get back at him. The Afghan resistance has never done it. But Karzai and his American allies have no problem in resorting to this method.



The devastated Haqqani family corrected the story later and questioned the source of the story since there were no Arabs or foreign or any fighters at all in the house. The U.S. attack was a deliberate act of terrorism to cause maximum pain to the Afghan commander.



Pakistani military quietly watched the Zardari-Gilani government take no position on the U.S. attacks. Then came the bombshell when, last week, Bush and his military chief, Adm. Mullen, said Pakistan was now part of the Iraq-Afghanistan ‘war theater’ and New York Times published a leak that said Bush had authorized attacks inside Pakistan without Islamabad’s consent.



The purpose behind the leak was to put Pakistan on notice and somehow force the issue down on Islamabad in the hope that Pakistan will grudgingly accept it.



Zardari’s Strange

Silence



After Gen. Kayani’s tough-worded counter statement, an embarrassed Prime Minister Gilani said the statement reflected his government’s policy.



But the biggest question mark is the silence of President Zardari. He did not endorse Gen. Kayani’s statement. Even more shocking for Pakistanis was that Mr. Zardari reneged on his promise that China will be his first foreign visit as President. Instead he left for London after a call from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown ‘inviting’ him to London to discuss the new U.S. strategy.



It is clear that President Zardari supports the new U.S. policy and does not agree with the Pakistani military’s warning that it will defend against attacks on Pakistan’s at all costs.



Mr. Zardari is in power thanks to the arrangement – known as the ‘deal’ - that Washington and London forced Pakistan to accept. His assets are mostly in United States and Britain. There is no way he can risk alienating his backers.


The deal originally envisaged the return of Benazir Bhutto to power in Pakistan. Former President Musharraf was forced to – or he personally accepted to help – make Mrs. Bhutto the new prime minister. Mrs. Bhutto accepted U.S. help in bringing her back to power in return for her commitment that she will allow Washington to do all or most of the things that Musharraf was not willing to do: mainly permit U.S. boots on the ground in Pakistan.



There is every possibility that President Zardari has been convinced by close advisors, especially Ambassador Husain Haqqani in Washington, to tacitly accept U.S. operations inside Pakistan and not allow the Pakistani military to dictate its terms.



Ambassador Haqqani is strongly sympathetic to Washington’s position(practically their servant). Last year, he played a major role in convincing Benazir Bhutto to make public statements accepting U.S. boots on Pakistani soil and American access to Dr. A. Q. Khan. Before his present assignment, Mr. Haqqani has been closely linked to the same hawkish U.S. think tanks that are the biggest advocates of U.S. military intervention in Pakistan. The elected government’s soft position on U.S. attacks has a lot to do with the work of Ambassador Haqqani and another American figure—Zalmay Khalilzad, President Zardari’s ‘secret’ American adviser.



It is a foregone conclusion; based on Ambassador Haqqani’s intrusive record at the Pakistan Foreign Office in the past four months, that he has a direct link to the bizarre statement by Prime Minister Gilani [“Pakistan can’t wage war with U.S.”-Sept 12] and the series of statements made by Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar that justified U.S. attacks against Pakistan [“U.S. drones fly too high, we can’t attack them” and “If U.S. attacks, there must be a reason.”].



Pakistan’s Options



If Pakistani military tries to block U.S. military violations, there is a possibility of limited armed conflict between Pakistani and American soldiers on the Afghan border.



Gen. Kayani’s warning of retaliation did help NATO make a public statement that it does not share Washington’s idea of taking the war to Pakistan. However, no one in Islamabad is convinced that NATO will remain neutral in the event that U.S. military tries to engage Pakistan in a conflict.



In case of conflict, Washington is expected to signal to India to open a front in the east in order to divert Pakistani military resources. Intelligence assets that have been planted inside Pakistan with links in Afghanistan will be activated and will possibly try to ratchet up the campaign of public terror in order to spread chaos and exert pressure on Pakistan military. More Chinese targets can be attacked or killed in order to strain ties between Beijing and Islamabad.



But Pakistan is not without options. In fact, the Pakistani position is stronger than what it appears to be. Islamabad can activate old contacts with a resurgent and rising Afghan Taliban inside Afghanistan. The entire Pakistani tribal belt will seize this opportunity to fight the Americans. The attempts to divide Pakistanis along sectarian lines have failed and the Americans cannot expect to repeat what they did in Iraq in March 2003. Pakistanis will fight and resist. There is a possibility that Pakistani tribesmen could cross the border in large numbers using secret routes to dodge aerial bombardment and join the Afghan Taliban and find their way to Kabul.


The misguided ‘Pakistani Taliban’ who appear to be operating as an extension of U.S. military in Afghanistan will also come under pressure of the tribesmen and will be forced to target the occupation forces instead of fighting the Pakistani government.


Washington might be tempted by the idea of signaling to the Indians to engage Pakistan from the east. But the fact is that the Indian army has a dangerous rebellion on its hands in the valley. By opening a front with Pakistan, Indian soldiers will have to protect their front and rear simultaneously. The Pakistani military has contingency plans for dealing with hostilities on two fronts.


U.S. soldiers also will not have it easy if they enter a conflict. This is why the Americans are hoping they will scare Pakistanis into submission. Pakistan’s economic crisis is being exploited. Pakistani officials say that IMF and World Bank have received U.S. instructions to go hard on Pakistan. Washington is also trying to convince Gulf Arabs not to support Pakistan this time.



But the situation between Islamabad and Washington does not have to come to this. Islamabad can help tip the scales in Washington against the hawks who want a war with Pakistan. Not all parts of the U.S. government accept this idea and this must be exploited. Pakistan must make it clear that it will retaliate. Statements like that of Prime Minister Gilani must be stopped. His statement virtually damaged the psychological effect of army chief’s warning.


U.S. military posturing aside, Washington has recently seen a string of diplomatic defeats. Russia has cut American meddling in Georgia to size. In Iraq, a coalition of Shiite parties is forcing the Americans to leave the country. And both Bolivia and Venezuela have expelled U.S. ambassadors, and, in Bolivia’s case, the world has suddenly become alert to Washington’s intrusive meddling in that country’s domestic politics and the role of the U.S. ambassador in fueling separatism. Which is not very different from the U.S. role inside Pakistan, where U.S. diplomats have created political chaos by directly engaging the politicians, coupled with creating and feeding insurgencies to weaken the country.



The only way to entrap Pakistan now is to either orchestrate a spectacular terrorist attack in U.S. and blame it on Pakistan, or to assassinate a high profile personality inside Pakistan and generate domestic strife that will make it impossible for the military to resist U.S. attacks.



© 2007-2008. All rights reserved. AhmedQuraishi.com.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've posted this article on the Pravda Forum, I hope it will open the eye of the Russians.