michelle
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Post by michelle on Nov 23, 2007 4:48:38 GMT 4
Pakistan's Taliban at the Gates I'm no military analyst, and I really don't know how much of the article below is true...I mean it is from Time Magazine, but Geeze Louise....What the hell has Musharraf been doing with the $100 million monthly in the form of direct cash transfers from the U.S. to his military? The article states that when Pakistani soldiers are faced with Swat Valley's militants:"It's not that the military is unwilling," says a Western military official based in Islamabad, "but is it capable?" Security analysts fear that Pakistan's security forces lack the training, equipment and expertise to tackle the burgeoning domestic extremist insurgency. ....that the Pakistani soldiers are undertrained and outgunned. He puts himself in the soldiers' boots: "I'm making $20 a month, I've got five bullets in my gun, and a couple of guys with AKs come up. I mean the question is, do I want to die? Oh, and by the way - they know all my family."Come on; 15,000 troops, helicopters, tanks and armored vehicles to battle a ragtag army of some 500 militants and they are helpless?! Don't get me wrong, I'd like to see every gun/weapon on the planet laid down on the ground by its handler; but the following is incomprehensible to me. I thought Musharraf was a highly trained general. Seems like the only training he's been using is for general elections. Truly, the inmates are in charge of the asylum here, there, and everywhere.....Michelle Pakistan's Taliban at the Gates By Aryn Baker Time Magazine Tuesday 20 November 2007 Peshawar - The local police precinct in the village of Matta has a new sign: Taliban Station. The same thing in the village of Kabal - in fact, nine of the twelve districts in the picturesque Swat Valley, 100 miles from Pakistan's capital, have been taken over by militants, who have torched music shops, barred girls from going to school, forced women to wear burqas and decreed that men must grow beards. As if to complete the flashback to Taliban-era Afghanistan, the new overlords have even attempted to blow up centuries-old Buddhist monuments. But this is not Afghanistan, of course, or even the tribal lands of the frontier provinces. The Swat valley is Pakistan's premier tourist destination, home to its only ski slope and a haven for trout fishing. But it has become increasingly embattled in the face of an anti-government campaign, over the past five months, by the charismatic radio preacher Maulana Fazlullah, known as the FM mullah, who has spawned a wave of fundamentalist militancy that has swept from the Afghan frontier through the lawless tribal areas of Waziristan and into the settled areas far from the border. The government of President General Pervez Musharraf seems unable to do anything about it. When Musharraf declared emergency rule three weeks ago, he cited the mounting insurgency in Swat as justification. But so far, the only threats he has been able to curb are those of a free press and an independent judiciary. "It's not that the military is unwilling," says a Western military official based in Islamabad, "but is it capable?" Security analysts fear that Pakistan's security forces lack the training, equipment and expertise to tackle the burgeoning domestic extremist insurgency. The West's most important ally in the war on terror is faltering, distracted by the political crisis in the capital and taking heavy losses that sap the morale in its ranks. This week the military launched an operation to reclaim control of Swat, sending in 15,000 troops, helicopters, tanks and armored vehicles to battle a ragtag army of some 500 militants. The goal is to push them back into their mountain redoubts, far from the civilian population. "We will bottle up as many of them as possible, and then eliminate them," says General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, Director General of Military operations. The army says that hundreds of militants have already been killed. That's a number militant spokesman Sirajuddin, who only has one name, dismisses as "totally rubbish. Only ten of our jihadis have been killed." If past performance in Waziristan, where last month 250 soldiers surrendered to a few dozen militants, is any precedent, numbers alone are not going to win Pakistan's war. In Swat, according to the military, entire villages have been taken over by bands of militants made up, in some cases, of only nine fighters. The problem, says the Western military official, is that the Pakistani soldiers are undertrained and outgunned. He puts himself in the soldiers' boots: "I'm making $20 a month, I've got five bullets in my gun, and a couple of guys with AKs come up. I mean the question is, do I want to die? Oh, and by the way - they know all my family." The Pakistani military, which came of age fighting archrival India on more conventional battlegrounds, is little prepared to face a classic guerrilla insurgency. While some of Swat's militants are foreign, the majority are home-grown, nourished on local antipathy to a government that doesn't represent their wishes, and allowed to fester by political parties loath to alienate the religious vote by cracking down on demands for Sharia. "The people want the militancy to stop," says Adnan Aurangzeb, a former member of Parliament from Swat, and the grandson of the valley's last princely ruler. "The militants have stopped tourism and disrupted their lives, but the government doesn't have the people's sympathy either." A military crackdown, and the inevitable civilian casualties, will only estrange the people further. "This is the kind of counterinsurgency training that the military lacks," says the military official. "There has got to be a strong information campaign to go along with the kinetics [military force]. Fazlullah has a FM station? Jam the damn thing. They sure as hell can jam stations here [in Islamabad], so why can't they do that up there?" Fazlullah, a local student who once earned a living ferrying passengers and goods across the Swat river, got his start studying under Maulana Sufi Muhammad, a religious teacher who founded the Tehrik Nifaz Shariat-e-Muhammaidi (Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law) in the 1990s. In 2002, TNSM was banned, and Muhammad thrown in jail for mobilizing thousands of his followers to fight American forces in Afghanistan. Fazlullah, by then his son-in-law, continued the campaign for Sharia using the platform of his popular radio show. Now the government has released Muhammad, in hopes that he can help calm the situation. Shuja calls it part of the "political effort" needed to accompany the military campaign. "Brute use of force alone would only take us backwards." That may be so, but releasing a known anti-government campaigner seems like a desperate gamble - one that the government may already be losing. "He is our leader and very dear to all of us, but our struggle for the implementation of a true Islamic system will not be affected," says Sirajuddin. "Maulana Sufi is demanding the same. It is good that the government has released him; now it should start work on the implementation of Sharia." While it is unlikely that the government will ever go that far, the newly appointed Vice Chief of Army Staff, Ashfaq Kyani, who is slated to take over from Musharraf when he retires as army chief, is already taking steps to remedy some of the military's worst problems. On Monday, he visited troops in Swat to raise morale and is taking concrete steps to get them more training and equipment. Even as U.S. military commanders return again and again to well-thumbed counterinsurgency textbooks dating to Vietnam to help with current engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan, Pakistan too has to learn the art of counterinsurgency. "It's going to be a long haul, and we don't have time for a long haul," says the Western military official. Meanwhile, Pakistan's militants aren't waiting. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- With reporting by Shaheen Buneri. Source: www.truthout.org/docs_2006/112207F.shtml
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Nov 30, 2007 17:54:18 GMT 4
Pakistan Displacing Iran as Crisis of ‘08?I had mentioned in an earlier post here that: I have the feeling of a Bad Moon Rising over Pakistan concerning U.S. intervention....It may be worse than I could have ever imagined. Pakistani leaders and citizens may be too embroiled in their own national political struggles to notice what lies in wait...MichellePakistan Displacing Iran as Crisis of ‘08?Sunday, November 18th, 2007 It’s unquestionably premature to conclude that Pakistan may displace Iran as the most urgent foreign-policy challenge likely to be faced by the Bush administration next year, but it’s beginning to look like a distinct possibility. For evidence, see column in the Sunday New York Times by Tom Friedman in which he somewhat offhandedly asserts, “After Iraq and Pakistan, the most vexing foreign policy issues that will face the next president will be how to handle Iran,” and, more strikingly, a second Times column co-authored by neo-conservative Fred Kagan and liberal interventionist Michael O’Hanlon, entitled “Pakistan’s Collapse, Our Problem” — the latest example of the growing partnership between the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Brookings Institution. “We do not intend to be fear mongers,” according to the two authors who then proceed to argue that Washington needs to focus right now on how best to intervene militarily in the Muslim world’s second-most-populous nation to secure its nuclear stockpile if and when things get out of hand there. Their optimal goal is to get those weapons to New Mexico, but, if that proves impossible [for, say, political reasons], then the U.S. should “settle for establishing a remote redoubt within Pakistan, with the nuclear technology guarded by elite Pakistani forces backed up (and watched over) by crack international troops.” The article itself is mind-blowing in the various scenarios it depicts; sending in, for example, “a sizable combat force — not only from the United States, but ideally also other Western powers and moderate Muslim nations” — in support of “the core of the Pakistan armed forces as they sought to hold the country together in the face of ineffective government, seceding border regions and Al Qaeda and Taliban assassination attempts against the leadership”. But the fact that Kagan is widely viewed as an architect of the “Surge” in Iraq (and hence close to the White House); and that O’Hanlon, a former Clinton national-security aide, is regarded as representative of an important sector within the Democratic Party means that the article and its various scenarios are likely to be taken quite seriously in the Muslim world, most especially in Pakistan itself. And, please note, there’s no talk of the importance of democracy here; it’s all about making sure those nukes are placed in reliable (preferably our) hands. The assumption is that the “moderate” core of the Pakistani military will be the key to success and, despite any nationalist feelings it may harbor, is prepared to fully cooperate with a major foreign military intervention to ensure foreign control of its most important weapons. I’m no Pakistan specialist; nor do I have any reason to believe that Kagan (whose expertise is German military history) and O’Hanlon are particularly learned on the subject; their operating assumptions appear highly questionable to me. But I have no doubt that their musings are indeed an indication of what is speeding to the top of the administration’s national-security agenda. Moreover, compared to the concerns they express about the fate of Pakistan’s nuclear stockpile and the lengths to which Washington should be prepared to go to secure it, the threats posed by Iran over the next year or so seem awfully tame. Now, with Musharraf appearing to have rejected the appeals of both Bush last week and Negroponte over the weekend, and the political impasse between the civilian opposition and the military under Musharraf having hardened considerably in just the past few days, a serious crisis of the kind envisaged by Mssrs. Kagan and O’Hanlon is looming ever larger. Under such circumstances, the notion that the U.S. would attack Iran seems considerably less credible, at least from Tehran’s point of view. Incidentally, for an interesting analysis of the relationship between U.S. military intervention, the regional rise in “Islamic nationalism,” and how it plays out in Pakistan, particularly from the point of view of the Pakistani military, I strongly recommend *an article by the former vice chair of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council and an expert on the region, Graham Fuller published November 8 by New Perspectives Quarterly. Fuller currently teaches at Simon Fraser University in beautiful Vancouver, B.C. [*this article is posted below...M]Source: www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/?p=81------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ANTI-AMERICAN ISLAMIC NATIONALISM IS BEHIND PAKISTAN CRISIS11-08-2007 Graham E. Fuller, a former vice-chair of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA, is currently an adjunct professor of history at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, and the author of "The Future of Political Islam."By Graham E. Fuller WASHINGTON — Washington is now confronted with an essentially no-win situation in Pakistan. We are witnessing the culmination of many years of ad hoc American policies based on an abiding faith in the power of U.S. military force coupled with ignorance of the strategic, cultural and psychological realities of the region. At heart is an incompatibility of American strategic interests with those of Pakistan, particularly as perceived by the country’s strategic elite. Powerful popular forces of Pakistani and Islamic nationalism intensify this divide. Washington wants what Pakistan will not deliver, or cannot deliver except to a modest degree. Bush wants to destroy al-Qaida in the Pak-Afghan region, a goal shared by Gen. Pervez Musharraf. But while al-Qaida lacks native roots in Pakistan, Osama bin Laden is still the object of sympathy by huge numbers in Pakistan and beyond. Humbled Muslim societies everywhere see bin Laden as one of the few figures in the Muslim world willing to stand up with honor and bravery to the American colossus and defy its imperial ambitions. That makes bin Laden more popular than Bush or Musharraf, even if most of the population does not share bin Laden’s vision of violent global jihadi struggle. But Washington’s demands cut still closer to the Pakistani bone. Bush wants Pakistan to cut off cross-border contact between Pakistan and Afghanistan, to deny Pakistan as a safe haven for the Afghan Taliban. Musharraf and his generals will pay lip service to this goal, but they will not ultimately do it. The reasons are not complex. As distasteful a symbol of primitive Islamic practice as the Taliban have been, today they represent essentially the major vehicle for Pashtun nationalism in Afghanistan, the single biggest ethnic group and much under-represented in the U.S.-backed Karzai government. More important, there are twice as many ethnic Pashtuns in Pakistan itself as there are in Afghanistan. The cross-border ties are inextricable: clan, family, history, culture, language, religion. This ethnic organism will not be sundered by the arbitrary and unpopular borders between the two countries. Pashtuns can, do and will casually ignore this artificial divide. Indeed, the Taliban as a political and ideological movement is growing more powerful within Pakistan itself. Pakistan already has one powerful enemy on its eastern flank — India. It cannot afford to have a hostile Afghanistan on its western side. Every Pakistani strategic thinker knows this. Yet under the Karzai government in Afghanistan, the enemies of Pakistan — the anti-Pashtun Northern Alliance, and a strong Indian political and intelligence presence — have grown strong. Pakistan’s primary voice and influence inside Afghanistan comes mainly via the Taliban, supported behind the scenes by the Pakistani military on strategic grounds. Washington may rail at this, but it cannot change these facts on the ground. Pakistan’s government is meanwhile still heavily influenced by powerful feudal rural landholders with regressive social and economic policies. The country desperately needs agricultural and social reform. But reform will undercut the powerful feudalists, a key pillar of power. Benazir Bhutto, for all her Western polish, herself represents those very landowning powers in her native Sindh region. The kind of deep social reform required is not in the offing, neither with Musharraf nor with Bhutto. She has been tested — twice — and found wanting. Washington wants a compliant Pakistan that will dutifully play its assigned role in the U.S. regional hegemonic vision. Washington will take it any way it can get it, with or without democracy. So U.S. calls for democracy are now issued in panic and ring hollow after six years of support for the Musharraf dictatorship. Pakistani liberals condemn the U.S. for supporting the Pakistani military dictatorship for so long in the name of an unpopular “war against terror” and perceive U.S. confrontationalism as only serving to inflame the militant jihadists. Nor can the crisis in Pakistan be viewed in isolation. It is of a piece with the war in Afghanistan, and is inextricably linked as well to broader convulsions across the Middle East. Islamic “nationalism” is a growing force as activists push back against American “boots on the ground” — a Pentagon term more revealing than the Pentagon realizes. It is the U.S. military presence and strategy across the region that is seen to rob Muslims of their dignity and sovereignty, in what increasingly is understood as an American war against Islam — bolstered in Washington by neo-con calls for a “World War IV against Islamofascism.” U.S. policies have helped forge a unity of vision across a Muslim world that under more normal circumstances would be far more focused on distinctive local concerns.The military remains the single most important force in Pakistan. It will most likely ensure that the country does not fall apart. Yet it incorporates many who sympathize with the Islamist agenda and the need to protect the country against outside domination. As radical Islamist power grows across the country, the military will not likely confront it directly; it will seek to divert it, placate some of it, accommodate large elements into the system where possible. We may even witness some bloodshed as militants clash with the military. But the military knows these forces cannot basically be destroyed by force. Meanwhile, the center of gravity is shifting toward the many Islamists who have joined hands with a few liberals against Musharraf. Any new political accommodation will likely be far less congenial to Washington.Today the U.S. military presence is perhaps the single most inflammatory element in politics across the region. The American military response to this regional challenge only serves to exacerbate it. Sadly, Pakistan is now swift on the heels of Iraq and Afghanistan in heading toward increased civil strife and bitter anti-American emotions. A “made in Washington” settlement in Afghanistan — the heart of the problem — is not going to work. It only generates increasing hostility as thousands more Lilliputians swarm the helpless Gulliver, drawing hostile Pakistani Islamists more deeply into the equation as well. In this sense bin Laden is winning. The region will only calm down following a withdrawal of U.S. forces from its confrontation with “Islam” and the development of a regional approach to the Afghan issue — one that acknowledges the deep interests of the main regional players who also seek stability in the region: Pakistan, Iran, Russia, China and India. Yet this reality is anathema to the hegemonic global strategy of the Bush administration. And so the arc of Islamic crisis continues to swell. Source: www.digitalnpq.org/articles/global/219/11-08-2007/graham_e._fullerurl for this post: tinyurl.com/yvbqnp
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Dec 2, 2007 15:46:21 GMT 4
Bhutto and Sharif decry dictatorship, while seeking a deal with Pakistan’s US-backed military regimeThe article above: ANTI-AMERICAN ISLAMIC NATIONALISM IS BEHIND PAKISTAN CRISISstates the following: Meanwhile, the center of gravity is shifting toward the many Islamists who have joined hands with a few liberals against Musharraf. Any new political accommodation will likely be far less congenial to Washington.
Considering the article below, which states: Yet, even as they fulminate against military rule, all major factions of Pakistan's traditional bourgeois political establishment are angling for a deal with the military and its supporters and bankrollers in Washington ask yourself: Why would Graham E. Fuller state: Any new political accommodation will likely be far less congenial to Washington.? Because he's the former vice-chair of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA, that's why!
There is a thought rolling around in my mind that nothing, I repeat, NOTHING, is as it seems to be in Pakistan, South America, the United States, Iran, or anywhere across the globe. I am beginning to wonder if all leaders and would be leaders, even when they oppose the United States' imperialistic intrusions, are not part of some bigger game where we, the general populace, are left to sift through pieces of information planted for us to read. Starting here, I am shifting my perspective on world happenings, and will try to sift through all the news, truth, partial truth, and utter BS in order to find what the PTBs don't want us to center on.....I'll take any help I can get from readers here at the FH forum.....Michelle Bhutto and Sharif decry dictatorship, while seeking a deal with Pakistan’s US-backed military regimeBy Keith Jones 26 November 2007 Pakistan is now in its twenty-third full day of de facto martial law. Basic civil liberties have been suspended. Thousands of government opponents—members of opposition parties, lawyers, human rights activists and trade unionists—remain in detention. Police break up anti-government protests with baton charges and mass arrests on a daily basis and the US-supported, military-dominated government has made civilians who challenge the rule of General President Pervez Musharraf liable to court martial. Yet, even as they fulminate against military rule, all major factions of Pakistan’s traditional bourgeois political establishment are angling for a deal with the military and its supporters and bankrollers in Washington.Only after the military regime had twice placed Benazir Bhutto under house arrest and arrested and roughed up thousands of her supporters did the “life chairperson” of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) announce, November 12, that she had “definitively” broken off power-sharing negotiations with Musharraf. Now, bowing to pressure from the Bush administration, Bhutto has signaled that her PPP will participate in the bogus national and provincial elections the military regime intends to hold January 8. And the other major parties, beginning with the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) of deposed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who returned to Pakistan yesterday, appear set to follow suit, thereby serving as direct accomplices of the military regime.Musharraf has indicated that the elections will likely take place with martial law still in effect, meaning most campaigning will be illegal and only the tamest criticism of the government and military will be allowed. Even more importantly, the elections are designed to legitimize and give a democratic façade to a political set-up in which the military retains decisive control over the Pakistani state through a strong presidency, a military-dominated National Security Council with sweeping powers of constitutional oversight over important government actions, and a judiciary that under Musharraf’s martial law regime has been purged of elements deemed “disruptive” by Pakistan’s generals. Last Thursday, Bhutto announced that the PPP would file nomination papers for a full slate of candidates for the January 8 elections, saying “We don’t want to give a walkover to our opponents.” On Sunday, she herself filed nomination papers for a National Assembly constituency in southern Sindh. “God willing, an election will be held and the People’s Party and the people will win,” Bhutto told reporters. Bhutto is claiming that her PPP has yet to take a final decision on whether to contest the elections. But this is clearly only so as to overcome opposition within her own party to such a craven act of collaboration with Musharraf and so as to provide the PPP an escape hatch should the popular protests against the government suddenly escalate, whether on account of the brutal martial law regime or the burgeoning economic crisis. (The current caretaker government is reported to be on the verge of announcing a 15 to 20 percent hike in oil prices.) Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister whom Musharraf overthrew by way of his 1999 coup, and the leader of what is generally held to be Pakistan’s second largest party, has vowed to lead a 17-party alliance, the All-Parties Democratic Movement, in boycotting the elections. But he too has instructed his party to fulfill all the legal formalities to participate in the elections and his brother and close advisor, Shahbaz Sharif, told reporters in London Saturday before joining Nawaz in his return to Pakistan that if the PPP chooses to contest the elections a boycott cannot work. Shabhaz refused to rule out Nawaz Sharif himself filing nomination papers Monday, although his candidacy could subsequently be struck down by the pro-Musharraf Election Commission because of his 2000 conviction on treason and kidnapping charges in a sham-trial mounted by the Musharraf regime. The PPP, the PML (N), and the third major ostensible opposition grouping, the Islamic fundamentalist Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), have claimed repeatedly over the past four years to be on the verge of launching a joint popular mobilization against the military regime, only to delay any action and trade accusations as to who thwarted the anti-Musharraf campaign. While the MMA has pointed to the longstanding back-channel contacts between Bhutto and Musharraf (contacts that climaxed in the Bush administration’s concerted attempt over the past six months to broker a Musharraf-Bhutto alliance), the PPP has chastised the MMA for serving the Musharraf regime by forming the government in the North-West Frontier Province and by participating in a governmental coalition with the pro-Musharraf PML (Q) in Baluchistan. Should the PPP and PML (N) contest the elections, there is no question that the MMA, whose constituent elements have also been filing candidate nomination papers, will also quickly drop its boycott rhetoric. Indeed, one of the MMA’s foremost leaders, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, has announced definitively that he and his party, the JUF (I), will participate in the elections. Rehman, who is infamous for his close relations to the Musharraf regime, met with the US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson Nov. 20. According to Rehman, she strongly urged him to participate in the military regime’s elections. The day before her discussions with Rehman, Patterson met with Bhutto and no doubt delivered her the same message. Both Nawaz and Shabhaz Sharif have vehemently denied claims that their return was the result of a deal with the Musharraf regime. Government spokesmen, however, have claimed that there is an understanding, although they have provided no details. Early last week Musharraf, accompanied by Pakistan’s intelligence chief, made an impromptu visit to Saudi Arabia, for talks about Sharif, who was exiled there in 2000. In the past Musharraf has mused about a possible deal with Sharif and his re-entry into Pakistani politics and the revival of the Punjab-based PML (N) could serve the military government by acting as a counter-weight to the Sindh-based PPP. But there is much press speculation that Musharraf’s hand was forced by a decision of Saudi King Abdullah, possibly acting at Washington’s bequest, to stop acting effectively as Sharif’s jailer. Until now the Bush administration has had little time for Sharif and it effectively supported his re-deportation from Pakistan last September. But there is nothing in Sharif’s conservative politics that would militate against Washington working with him.What can be said with assurance is that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia—who like Musharraf is a close ally of the Bush administration and certainly no advocate of democracy—would not have released Sharif from the terms of his exile in Saudi Arabia and effectively sponsored his return to Pakistan if he had not been certain that Sharif would not cut across Washington’s plans to maintain a military-dominated government in Pakistan.Not only did King Abdullah meet for two hours and dine with Sharif on Friday, he lent him the plane that brought him back to Pakistan. The scion of a family of industrialists, Nawaz Sharif has traditionally had close connections to the military, big business in his native Punjab, and the religious right, which the military has itself long patronized. Sharif began his political career in the mid-1980s as a protégé of another military dictator, General Zia, and the pro-Musharraf party that the military sponsored after ousting Sharif, the PML (Q), is largely formed by defectors from Naswaz’s PML. That said, there is no shortage of bad blood between Musharraf and Sharif. After all, the two clashed over Pakistan’s 1999 Kargil military adventure in Indian-occupied Kashmir, and when Sharif moved to oust Musharraf as head of the military in October 1999, the latter activated pre-existing plans for a coup. In early September, when the Sharif brothers first attempted to end seven years of exile, the military mounted a massive security operation, sealing off Islamabad airport, taking the two into custody, and then quickly putting them on a plane back to Saudi Arabia. Yesterday, the government again mounted a major mobilization of security forces, deploying more than 6,000 police in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent large numbers of PML (N) supporters from greeting the brothers at Lahore airport. In the hours before their return, large numbers of PML (N) activists were also taken into preventive detention. While a spokesman for Sharif’s party put the number at 1,800, a government official scoffed that the total was more like 100. Nevertheless, unlike in early September, the Sharifs have been allowed to enter the country. If all sections of the bourgeois opposition are conniving with the Musharraf regime and contemplating participating in the sham January 8 elections, it is because they all covet a slice of political power and the patronage prerogative that goes with it and fear that if they boycott the elections their rivals will benefit. Even more importantly, they all are terrified of a genuine popular mobilization against military rule, for they recognize that the military is the bulwark of their privileges—of the Pakistani nation-state and Pakistan’s vastly unequal property-relations.Source: www.wsws.org/articles/2007/nov2007/paki-n26.shtml
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Dec 16, 2007 7:51:38 GMT 4
Musharraf Lifts Emergency Rule, Pledges Free Election (Update1) By Khaleeq Ahmed and Farhan Sharif Dec. 15 (Bloomberg) -- President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan lifted emergency rule as promised and pledged to hold free and fair parliamentary elections. Opposition leaders called on him to end remaining restrictions on courts and the media. ``It is my commitment to the entire nation and the world that elections will be absolutely free and transparent,'' Musharraf said in a televised speech today. ``No party has any justification to boycott the elections.'' Two former prime ministers, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, have said their parties will take part in the elections after initially threatening a boycott. A spokesman for Sharif, who was deposed by Musharraf in a 1999 military coup, said today's order didn't go far enough. ``Lifting of emergency is just a small step,'' said Tehmina Daultana, vice president of Sharif's political party. ``Free elections can only be ensured if the judiciary is reinstated.'' Musharraf suspended the constitution on Nov. 3 and fired Supreme Court judges as they were about to rule on the legality of his October re-election as president. He also imposed media curbs and arrested thousands of opposition supporters. The former Army general said emergency rule was needed to combat terrorism in the world's second-largest Muslim nation, which has received billions of dollars in U.S. aid to battle al- Qaeda and Taliban fighters operating in its northwest region bordering Afghanistan. Musharraf said terrorism, which had spread ``from north to south,'' has been curbed during the 42 days of emergency rule. A suicide bomb killed five people and injured six others in the northwestern city of Nowshera today, the army said. Media Restrictions Today's order didn't relax restrictions on the media, and deposed judges, including former top judge Iftikhar Muhammed Chaudhry, won't get their jobs back. ``The lifting of emergency fulfills a demand of the political parties and the international community,'' Zafar Nawaz Jaspal, assistant professor of international relations, at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, said. `` Media curbs still remain and the judiciary's position is the same. So this is just a way to legitimize the elections.'' Musharraf made six amendments to the constitution late yesterday to ensure actions taken under emergency rule can't be challenged. The amendments also forcibly retired deposed judges. ``This is illegal just like all Musharraf's steps,'' said Rasheed Razvi, vice-chairman of the Pakistan Bar Council. ``The constitution can only be amended by parliament.'' Pakistan should release detainees, lift all restrictions on the media and ensure a non-partisan Election Commission, U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in a statement today. Judges Fired Musharraf's October re-election as president was contested by opponents who said the law bars military commanders from seeking the office. Musharraf installed a new panel of Supreme Court justices who rejected the challenge and backed the Oct. 6 presidential ballot, in which Musharraf won a majority of votes from national and regional lawmakers. Musharraf stepped down as army chief on Nov. 28 and was sworn in for a second five-year term as president a day later. Most opposition supporters have been freed. Lifting the emergency ``will not restore real constitutional rule'' unless Musharraf also ``withdraws changes he made to the constitution,'' New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a statement. ``These amendments serve the purpose of institutionalizing impunity for the military's human rights abuses and muzzling lawyers and the media.'' Lawyers' Boycott Lawyers plan to boycott the election to pressure the government to reinstate deposed judges, according to the Pakistan Bar Council. As many as 40 lawyers, including Aitzaz Ahsan, president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, have withdrawn their applications to contest the election. Cricket captain turned lawmaker Imran Khan has said his Tehrik-e-Insaaf party will boycott the elections because they are illegal under Musharraf. Khan won the sole seat for his party in the 2002 elections. Jamaat-e-Islami, the second-largest religious party, has also decided to boycott the ballot. Sixty-seven percent of Pakistanis want Musharraf to resign, according to an opinion poll published on Dec. 13. The survey was conducted last month by the Washington-based International Republican Institute. A majority of Pakistanis opposed the decree and 70 percent of respondents said the government doesn't deserve to be returned to office in elections. Bhutto, 54, who returned to Pakistan in October, ending eight years in self-imposed exile, has said she has evidence the pro-Musharraf party plans to rig voting. She survived an assassination attempt on her homecoming procession when suicide bombers killed 136 people in Karachi. Sharif, 57, who was barred by the Election Commission from contesting the ballot on the grounds that he was convicted of hijacking in 2000, has said he won't work under Musharraf if he wins a majority in the voting. Sharif returned to Pakistan last month. To contact the reporter on this story: Khaleeq Ahmed in Islamabad, Pakistan on paknews@bloomberg.net ;
Last Updated: December 15, 2007 14:49 EST Source: www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601091&sid=ak6IqLaIVDs8
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Dec 28, 2007 12:32:46 GMT 4
In wake of assassination of Benazir Bhutto, Bush administration rushes to defense of MusharrafBy Keith Jones 28 December 2007 Pakistan People’s Party “life chairperson” and prime ministerial candidate Benazir Bhutto was assassinated early Thursday evening, Pakistani time, while campaigning for national and provincial assembly elections scheduled for January 8. The assassination was carried out in Rawalpindi, headquarters of the Pakistani military and ostensibly one of the country’s most secure cities. There are conflicting accounts of how the assassination occurred. Many news reports are citing witnesses as saying that Bhutto was shot in the neck and torso before her assassin blew himself up. The explosion killed at least 20 other people. However, the New York Times has reported senior Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) officials as saying Bhutto was hit by a rooftop sniper before a second assailant carried out the suicide bombing. A rally organized by the other major opposition party, which was to have been addressed by deposed prime minister Nawaz Sharif, also came under attack Thursday. Snipers reportedly killed four supporters of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) and injured five more. Before any evidence had been collected, let alone examined, and with key facts about the assassination still in dispute, the US political establishment effectively declared the investigation over, categorically attributing Bhutto’s murder to Al Qaeda or a like-minded Islamicist group. In a perfunctory statement wildly at odds with political reality in Pakistan, President George W. Bush declared Thursday morning, US time, that Bhutto’s assassination was a “cowardly act by murderous extremists who are trying to undermine Pakistan’s democracy.” He urged Pakistanis “to honor Benazir Bhutto’s memory by continuing with the democratic process for which she so bravely gave her life.” Later, White House spokesman Scott M. Stanzel said Bush planned to speak with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in the coming hours, but would not tell him whether to proceed with the January 8 elections. “That is up to the Pakistanis,” said Stanzel. Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama spoke along the same lines as Bush, and the US media quickly took up the refrain: Bhutto was a martyr to the war on terror and the Pakistani people should rally round Musharraf and the military’s stage-managed elections. There was hardly a voice in the US media that even hinted at the possibility that elements in and around the Musharraf regime could have had a hand in Bhutto’s murder. No matter that the Musharraf regime has an eight-year record of gross human rights abuses, including orchestrating lethal attacks on political opponents, and the Pakistani military-intelligence apparatus has for decades patronized armed Islamicist groups and used them as tools of its geo-political and political machinations.Can there be any doubt that the assassination of the leading oppositional figure in a country whose military strongman was out of favor with the US would have evoked a very different response from Washington? Then the entire American political and media establishment would have pointed the finger of guilt at the regime. Even if the Musharraf government was not directly involved in the murder of Bhutto, a very strong case is already emerging that its calculated negligence produced an outcome it privately welcomed. Bhutto herself publicly accused elements in the government and Pakistan’s military-intelligence establishment of having staged the October 19 attempt on her life in Karachi—a multiple bomb attack that killed 140 people.Prior to her mid-October return to Pakistan, Bhutto wrote a letter to the government naming three individuals whom she said were intent on destroying her. While Bhutto never made the names public, they are reputed to have included Ijaz Shah, the director general of the Intelligence Bureau. In recent weeks, Bhutto repeatedly complained that the government had failed to provide for her most basic security needs, including supplying her with an armored car with tinted glass windows and the requisite equipment to jam electronic bomb detonations. One of her US spokesmen said the slain PPP leader had told him that were she killed, the Pakistani government and military should be held responsible. US Senator Joseph Biden, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, has stated that he personally appealed to the Musharraf regime to provide greater security for Bhutto, but his appeals were ignored. It appears that Bhutto herself, though aware of the immense danger to which she was exposed, counted on her close relations with the US to provide her with protection. In this she gravely miscalculated. The fraud of Pakistani “democracy”Bhutto’s assassination throws into question whether the military government headed by Musharraf will proceed with the long-promised elections. At the very least, the government can be expected to use Thursday’s assassination and bombing atrocity as the pretext to ban virtually all election campaign events. Musharraf made a brief television appearance in which he announced three days of national mourning and blamed the killing on Islamicist terrorists. Nawaz Sharif, whom the regime has prevented even standing as an election candidate, responded to Bhutto’s assassination by announcing that his party will boycott the elections if the government holds them on January 8. The assassination of Bhutto, Pakistan’s best known opposition leader and a two-time prime minister, only underscores the utterly bogus character of the elections, which have been touted by the Bush administration and the US media as marking a climatic step in Pakistan’s “democratic transformation.” On December 15, Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 military coup, lifted the state of emergency he had imposed six weeks earlier. He had declared emergency rule so as to abolish, by dictatorial fiat, all legal-constitutional impediments to his reelection as president. The state of emergency continues, however, in all but name. The media remains subject to draconian censorship provisions. Government opponents can be tried by military courts. Election processions and all anti-government protests are banned. And the country’s Supreme and High courts, which have ultimate legal authority over the elections, have been purged of judges deemed insufficiently loyal to Musharraf.As is generally true of such criminal conspiracies, it cannot be said with certainty who was the author of Bhutto’s assassination. But much, if not most, of the Pakistani public holds the Musharraf regime and its military sponsors responsible. Distraught PPP members who had gathered at the hospital to which the fatally wounded Bhutto was taken, chanted “Dog, Musharraf, dog.” Leaders of Al Qaeda and various other Islamic militias did vow to eliminate Bhutto, after the Bush administration made clear earlier this year that it favored a power-sharing deal between her and Musharraf, in hopes of providing the dictatorship with greater popular legitimacy. But this does not mean that Islamacists carried out the killing or, even if they did, that it was not instigated or facilitated by elements from within the military-security apparatus and the government. Many within the Pakistani military and bourgeois elite have never forgiven the PPP for having made demagogic appeals to mass discontent over poverty and inequality during its rise to power in the dying days of the Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan dictatorships. Bhutto’s father, PPP founder and former Pakistani prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged by the military regime of Zia-ul Haq in 1979 to a chorus of applause from Pakistan’s business and landlord elite.The Bush administration expended considerable energy in the summer and fall trying to engineer a power-sharing deal between Bhutto and Musharraf and apparently still held out hope that a deal could be fashioned between them following the sham elections. But through the support it lent Musharraf during the recent “emergency,” the Bush administration made abundantly clear that it views Musharraf and the military as its best allies. The US’s steadfast support for the government and its preposterous claim to be guiding Pakistan toward democracy could have only encouraged the most ruthless and reckless elements in the military and among Musharraf’s political cronies in the Pakistan Muslim League (Q), if not the president himself, to contemplate getting rid of Bhutto once and for all. Bhutto’s assassination constitutes a political decapitation of the PPP, which opinion polls had indicated was likely to emerge as the largest single party in Pakistan’s national parliament. A dynastic party, the PPP has but all exclusively focused its political appeal on Benazir Bhutto and her executed father. The assassination of the PPP’s “life chairperson” manifestly benefits Musharraf and the regime by eliminating a potential rival for power and for Washington’s favor. There are, however, concerns in the US political establishment, as voiced in a Council on Foreign Relations conference call with the press Thursday afternoon, that the assassination could strip the regime of any remaining credibility it enjoys and spark social unrest. Rioting broke out in Karachi, in other cities in Bhutto’s native Sindh province and elsewhere in Pakistan. According to the BBC, at least eleven people were killed as security forces moved to quell the protests. The role of US imperialismIt is imperialism, above all US imperialism, which ultimately bears responsibility for the political and socio-economic malignancy that is contemporary Pakistan—a country where the officer corps dominates the government and shares with a tiny stratum of capitalists and landlords the fortunes amassed from the brutal exploitation of the working class and impoverished rural toilers.
While the US media prattles on about Pakistani democracy, the reality is that Pakistani capitalism has failed to address the most elementary problems of the toiling masses—from guaranteeing basic civil liberties and the equality of women, to providing education and sanitation, to eliminating child- and bonded-labor.In pursuit of the US elite’s predatory economic and geo-political interests, Democratic and Republican administrations alike have supported a succession of brutal military dictatorships.Two interconnected processes lie at the crux of Pakistan’s still-born democracy and economic underdevelopment: the imperialist-imposed communal partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 and the refashioning of Pakistan under General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq. In close alliance with Washington, Zia “Islamicized” the Pakistani military and Pakistani politics, while making the country the pivot of the US campaign to undermine the Soviet Union by fomenting and arming Islamic fundamentalist militias in Afghanistan. Pakistan is an artificial state, whose creation defied economic and geographic logic, to say nothing of the historical and cultural traditions of South Asia, and served to perpetuate two key elements in the British system of imperial control: the state-sponsored definition of Muslims as a separate political group and the Punjabi-dominated British Indian Army.To say this is not to absolve the bourgeois Indian National Congress (INC) of responsibility for partition, nor to suggest that the independent bourgeois state created in India, on the foundations of the British Raj, has any greater historical legitimacy.The INC connived with the Hindu communalist Hindu Mahasabha and RSS and was unwilling and organically incapable of defeating the machinations of British imperialism by uniting the subcontinent from below through the revolutionary mobilization of the working class and oppressed peasantry against landlordism and capitalism. Partition was only the most graphic and bloody expression of the suppression, at the hands of imperialism and the aspirant national bourgeoisies of India and Pakistan, of the anti-imperialist movement that had convulsed the subcontinent in the first half of the twentieth century. It has thwarted rational economic development, enshrined the communal divide in a state rivalry that has embroiled the peoples of South Asia in three declared wars, served as a means for the respective bourgeoisies to deflect social discontent into chauvinism, and, last but not least, facilitated imperialist domination of South Asia.Continuing the role charted by the Muslim League prior to independence, the Pakistani bourgeoisie only more abjectly and openly aligned itself with imperialism than did its Indian rival during the Cold War. By the middle 1950s, Pakistan was one of Washington’s “frontline” states in confrontation with the USSR, and the Pakistani military was well on the way to becoming a linchpin of US geo-political strategy. When Commander in Chief Ayub Khan seized power in 1958, he received Washington’s enthusiastic support, as exemplified by the quip, “Ike [Eisenhower] likes Ayub.” After the Ayub Khan regime collapsed in 1968-69 in the face of mass student-worker protests and opposition from East Pakistan to its subordinate position within the Pakistani federation, Nixon and Kissinger encouraged a new military strongman, Yahya Khan, in a genocidal campaign to prevent Bangladesh’s secession. Pakistan’s ignominious defeat in the Third Indo-Pakistani War caused the Pakistani elite and Washington to turn to Bhutto, the scion of a landlord family and former protégé of Ayub Khan. Bhutto used anti-Indian chauvinism and pseudo-socialist phrases to politically emasculate the mass opposition to the military and Pakistan’s grossly unequal social order.During his six years in power, he sought to balance precariously between conflicting social forces. He rehabilitated the military, using it to crush a nationalist insurgency in Baluchistan, proclaimed Pakistan an Islamic republic, and maintained the US-Pakistani alliance. He also carried out limited social reforms, while violently suppressing any independent actions of the working class. Ultimately, as politics internationally shifted to the right in the late 1970s, the military, under General Zia and with Washington’s encouragement, seized power. The Zia regime would have horrific consequences for the subsequent development of Pakistan. For some eleven years, beginning in 1978-79, Washington utilized Islamabad as the nexus for the US intervention in the Afghan civil war, fomenting and organizing the anti-Soviet Islamicist forces and acting as the conduit of US and Saudi arms and money to the Afghan mujahadeen. This complemented Zia’s own efforts domestically to build up the Islamic right as a bulwark against the working class and the left, and to promote Islamic fundamentalism as the state ideology.As the state withdrew from providing education and other basic public services, in keeping with the Zia regime’s right-wing economic policies, Islamic religious institutions were encouraged to fill the gaping holes.
The end result was the promotion of religious obscurantism, mounting sectarian strife, increased oppression of minorities, and the development of a nexus between the military and armed Islamicist groups, which all sections of the Pakistani elite sought to make use of in Pakistan’s geo-political conflict with India.During the Cold War, Washington egged on the Pakistan elite in its ruinous rivalry with India, providing and selling Pakistan all manners of arms and weapon systems. But following the collapse of the USSR and the Indian bourgeoisie’s repudiation of its national economic policy, the US, under the Clinton administration, moved to fashion a new strategic partnership with India. Though Pakistan was now less central to US geo-political strategy, the Pentagon-Pakistani military partnership endured, with Washington continuing to view the Pakistani military as a prized asset and the bulwark of the Pakistani state. When the Bush administration seized on the events of September 11, 2001 to shift to a more aggressive foreign policy aimed at securing US control over the oil resources of Central Asia and the Middle East, the Pentagon-Pakistani military relationship was injected with new vigor, and Musharraf quickly emerged as one of the US’s most important allies. Washington admits to having provided $10 billion to Pakistan since September 2001, the vast bulk of it in the form of military aid and payments to the military for support in the “war on terror.” In return, the Musharraf regime has provided pivotal logistical support for the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, allowed US security forces to run torture centers, and is now allowing Pakistan to be used as a training ground for a possible US attack on Iran. Even as the Musharraf regime has once again bared it fangs over the past two months, imposing a six-week state of emergency, the US has moved to further strengthen its ties with the Pakistani military. Last week, the Democratic Party-controlled US Congress approved a further $785 million in aid for Islamabad for 2008. According to reports in the Washington Post and New York Times, under a newly concluded US-Pakistani agreement, several hundred US Special Forces will be deployed to Pakistan in the coming weeks to “train and support indigenous counter-insurgency forces and clandestine counter-terrorism units.” (December 26, Washington Post)The working class and the struggle for democracy in PakistanThe struggle for democracy in Pakistan is a struggle against the US-sponsored and financed military state apparatus and the imperialist-imposed nation-state system in South Asia. It requires the intervention of Pakistan’s toiling masses into political life in the fight for basic civil liberties, but also for jobs, public services and support for rural producers—that is, for radical anti-capitalist measures. In the final analysis, the failure of the Pakistani bourgeoisie to adhere to even the most elementary democratic norms and its recourse time and again to military rule and extra-constitutional measures is rooted in the extreme polarization of wealth within Pakistani society and its subordination to imperialism. No section of the bourgeois democratic opposition, including the minority of parties that called for an election boycott, is willing or able to make a genuine appeal to the masses, tying the struggle against military rule to the socio-economic grievances of the working class and Pakistan’s peasant toilers, above all the agricultural laborers and tenant and share-crop farmers.This is underscored by the evolution of Bhutto. Over the past year, as opposition to the Musharraf regime became more and more publicly manifest, Bhutto time and again expressed her opposition to any popular agitation against the government, for fear it would escape the political elite’s control. All sections of the bourgeois opposition are dependent on the military to defend their own class privileges against the working class and to maintain the territorial integrity of the crisis-ridden Pakistani state. They are, moreover, tied through a web of financial interconnections to imperialism. They consequently fear and oppose a genuine popular challenge to military rule and imperialist domination.
The growing popular discontent over deepening social inequality, mounting unemployment, food and energy shortages and price rises only makes the bourgeois opposition more disinclined to make any appeal to the Pakistani people to challenge the dictatorship. They are haunted by the fear that the once roused, Pakistan’s toilers will not quickly be returned to the shadows and will begin to invest the call for democracy with an egalitarian content that challenges their own privileges.As part of the struggle to mobilize the masses to bring down the Musharraf dictatorship and break the pernicious political influence of the bourgeois opposition, the working class and socialist-minded students and intellectuals should demand the immediate release of all political prisoners, the scrapping of all press restrictions, the lifting of all prohibitions on political protests and strikes, the dissolution of the Musharraf regime and the holding of genuine elections. But in doing so, they should reject the entire framework of the ruling class debate over the constitution and democracy, which reduces democracy to the observance of a handful of civil liberties and accepts as a given Pakistan’s capitalist order and subservient relationship to the United States and world imperialism. Genuine democracy requires the liquidation of landlordism, the dismantling of the US sponsored military-security state, the separation of mosque from state, socialist measures to provide jobs and a secure income for all, and the overthrow of the communal state system that imperialism imposed on South Asia, with the connivance of the Indian National Congress and Muslim League, in 1947-48. It will be realized only in the form of a workers’ and peasants’ government that consciously links the fate of the toilers of Pakistan and South Asia to the international working class’ struggle to put an end to capitalism.The World Socialist Web Site appeals to our readers and supporters in Pakistan and South Asia to begin the fight for a new revolutionary party of the working class—a Pakistani section of the International Committee of the Fourth International—that will prosecute this struggle. Source:www.wsws.org/articles/2007/dec2007/bhut-d28.shtml
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michelle
Administrator
I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Dec 29, 2007 14:36:25 GMT 4
Bhutto assassination heightens threat of US intervention in PakistanBy Bill Van Auken 29 December 2007 With Pakistan erupting in violence over the assassination of its former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and amid conflicting accounts as to both the identity of her assassins and even the cause of her death, official Washington and the American mass media have coalesced around a version of events that has been crafted to suit US strategic interests. Without any substantive evidence, the crime has been attributed to Al Qaeda, while Bhutto herself has been proclaimed a martyr both in the struggle for democracy in her own country and in the US “global war on terror.” Meanwhile, the government of President Pervez Musharraf has been exonerated. There is ample reason to question this “official story” on all counts. The obvious intent is to turn this undeniably tragic event into a new justification for the pursuit of US strategic interests in the region. In the week leading up to the assassination, there have been a number of reports indicating that US military forces are already operating inside Pakistan and preparing to substantially escalate these operations.At this point, there is no proof as to the authorship of the assassination. The military-controlled government of President Musharraf claims to have intercepted a phone call in which an “Al Qaeda leader” congratulated his supporters for the killing. Yet web sites that have claimed responsibility for previous Al Qaeda terrorist acts have not done so in relation to the Bhutto killing. Then there is the question as to how Bhutto died. In the wake of numerous eyewitness accounts that she had been shot before a bomb blast ripped through the crowd at an election campaign rally in Rawalpindi, the Pakistani Interior Ministry issued three conflicting accounts: the first saying that she died from a bullet wound to the neck, the second that she was killed by shrapnel from the bomb and a third claiming that she had fractured her skull against a door handle while ducking down into the sunroof of her vehicle to dodge either the bullets or the explosion. How the government reached this last novel conclusion is unclear, as no autopsy was conducted on Bhutto’s body. A spokesperson for Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party, Farooq Naik, called the Musharraf government’s shifting story “a pack of lies” and insisted that the real cause of death was sniper fire. If indeed the Pakistani politician was shot to death by a sniper in Rawalpindi, the historic garrison town which is headquarters to the country’s military, suspicion would shift even more sharply towards the government or elements within its powerful military-intelligence apparatus. This is already the predominant popular sentiment within Pakistan itself. As Philadelphia Inquirer’s columnist Trudy Rubin reported from the country, “Just about every Pakistani with whom I spoke blamed her death not on Al Qaeda, but on their own government—and the United States.” And, there is irrefutable evidence that Bhutto herself saw the government, rather than Al Qaeda, as the main threat to her life. The New York Times Friday cited one Western official who met with the Pakistani politician the day before she was killed. He said, according to the Times, that Bhutto “complained that while the militants represented a threat, the government was as much a threat in its failure to ensure security. She suggested that either the government had a deal with the militants that allowed them to carry on their terrorist activities, or that President Musharraf’s approach at dealing with the problem of militancy was utterly ineffective.” And in Washington, Bhutto’s American lobbyist, Mark Siegel, released an email from Bhutto that she had asked him to make public if she were assassinated. The message was sent shortly after the attempt on her life last October—a massive bombing that claimed the lives of nearly 140 people during a procession in Karachi following her return to the country. She had publicly accused the Pakistani military-intelligence apparatus of having a direct hand in this attack. In her email, she said that she would “hold Musharraf responsible” if she were killed in Pakistan.“I have been made to feel insecure by his minions,” she wrote of the Pakistani military strongman. Detailing the refusal of government officials to provide her with elementary security, Bhutto wrote, “There is no way that what is happening in terms of stopping me from taking private cars or using tinted windows or giving jammers [to detonate roadside bombs] or four police mobiles to cover all sides could happen without him.” In an interview on CNN, Siegel commented: “As we prepared for the campaign ... Bhutto was very concerned she was not getting the security that she had asked for. She basically asked for all that was required for someone of the standing of a former prime minister. All of that was denied her.” Asked by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer whether Bhutto had herself not been reckless, Siegel responded, “Don’t blame the victim for the crime. Musharraf is responsible.” Meanwhile, Senator Joseph Biden, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, held a press conference in Iowa in which he revealed that he had personally interceded with Musharraf to ask for specific security procedures to protect Bhutto, but his requests were ignored. “The failure to protect Mrs. Bhutto raises a lot of hard questions for the government and security services that have to be answered,” Biden said. When asked if he believed the Pakistani government had deliberately placed Bhutto in harm’s way, he backed off, however, claiming he did not know what security was in place when Bhutto was killed. The military-Islamist connectionThe lines separating Al Qaeda—or, to be more precise, radical Islamist elements in Pakistan—from the country’s military-intelligence apparatus are hardly firm. Pakistan’s military-controlled regimes have encouraged and rested upon support from Islamist forces—as a counterweight to the working class and the left—ever since General Zia-ul Haq seized power and carried out the hanging of Benzir Bhutto’s father, then Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, in 1979. The military regime—and in particular its intelligence arm, the ISI—further cemented these ties during the US-backed war against the pro-Soviet regime in Afghanistan in the 1980s. It was then that the ISI and the CIA worked to build up the movement that became know as Al Qaeda and collaborated directly with Osama bin Laden. [*see article below from 2001]That these ties still exist is without question. US military commanders have repeatedly complained that their Pakistani counterparts have warned Al Qaeda elements of impending US operations. That the Musharraf government or elements within the military could utilize Islamist elements to carry out such an assassination—or facilitate their committing such a crime—is obvious. As for a motive, Musharraf and his main base of support, the military command, have a clear one. They had no interest in sharing state power—and access to both graft and billions of dollars in US aid—with the Pakistan People’s Party. Benazir Bhutto was twice elected prime minister in the 1990s—and twice removed. Each of these changes in power involved bitter conflicts between her government and hostile elements in the top brass of the Pakistani military and the ISI. Now Musharraf’s principal rival for political power is dead and her party in disarray. He remains the principal figure upon whom Washington depends in Pakistan, a reality reflected in the insistence by the Bush administration, the media and the leading Democratic presidential candidates that he had nothing to do with the killing. While the violent death of a 54-year-old woman with three children is both tragic and shocking, the attempt to turn Bhutto into a martyr for democracy is preposterous.She was brought back to Pakistan as part of a sordid scheme hatched by the Bush administration to give the military-controlled regime headed by Musharraf a pseudo-democratic facade. The Washington Post spelled out the details of this deal in a report Friday. With mounting political unrest in Pakistan, Washington was desperate to prop up the military strongman, whom it viewed as a principal asset in the so-called war on terror. “As President Pervez Musharraf’s political future began to unravel this year, Bhutto became the only politician who might help keep him in power,” the Post reported. It quoted Bhutto’s lobbyist, Mark Siegel, as stating, “The US came to understand that Bhutto was not a threat to stability, but was instead the only possible way that we could guarantee stability and keep the presidency of Musharraf intact.” The terms of the arrangement were that Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party would not oppose Musharraf’s widely unpopular bid for a third term as president last September and, in return, Musharraf would grant Bhutto immunity from criminal charges related to the rampant corruption that characterized her previous terms as prime minister. US officials, including Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher, served as the direct brokers in 18 months of negotiations leading to the deal, flying back and forth between Islamabad and Bhutto’s homes in Dubai and London.
Musharraf was reportedly opposed to any amnesty for Bhutto, not to mention her return to power. According to the Post report, it was Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte—a veteran of dirty deals with dictators—who finally convinced him. “He basically delivered a message to Musharraf that we would stand by him, but he needed a democratic facade on the government, and we thought Benazir was the right choice for that face,” Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and National Security Council staff member, told the Post.In the end, it was Bush’s Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who phoned Bhutto in early October, telling her to return to Pakistan to serve essentially as an instrument of US policy and a prop for the Musharraf regime. In doing so, Rice sent Bhutto to her death. Musharraf had no real desire to move ahead with Washington’s attempt to make Bhutto the presentable “face” for his reactionary regime, which led to, at the very least, the denial of state protection to Bhutto, if not her outright assassination by elements of the state. The political reality behind Bhutto’s facadeHad the deal been consummated, it hardly would have led to a flowering of democracy in Pakistan. Rather, it would have installed a Washington-controlled prime minister as the figurehead for a military-dominated regime aligned with the Bush administration in a country where 70 percent of the population is hostile to US policy in the region. And, while Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party has engaged in populist and even pseudo-socialist rhetoric, it has always been a representative of the Pakistan’s landed aristocracy and a firm defender of its power and privileges. During her two terms in power, the Bhutto family used their control over the state apparatus to enrich themselves, with her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, earning the nickname “Mr. ten percent,” for the kickbacks he extracted for state contracts.Her governments—like that of Musharraf—were characterized by harsh repression, disappearances and state killings, including that of her own brother, Murtaza, who had split from the PPP.That Washington was able to broker a deal between Bhutto and Musharraf is testimony to the entirely rotten and anti-democratic character of the Pakistani bourgeoisie as a whole, a ruling elite that is separated by a vast gulf from the masses of impoverished workers and peasants and which has defended its wealth and power through savage repression, open alignment with imperialism and appeals to every form of religious obscurantism and communalist hatred.The direct involvement of Musharraf and the Pakistani military in the Bhutto assassination will not stop the Bush administration from continuing to collaborate with him or, if necessary, another military strongman. Washington has maintained its strategic alliance with Pakistan through the continuous assassinations and military coups that have characterized the country’s history. It has acted as a direct accomplice in many of these crimes, most notoriously in the support given by President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State of State Henry Kissinger to the bloodbath unleashed against Bengali nationalist movement in 1971, in which US-supplied arms were used to butcher hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of civilians, while millions more were turned into refugees. The Bush administration’s aim remains that of rescuing and somehow legitimizing the Musharraf regime. Bush spent a large part of Friday in a secure video conference linking his ranch in Crawford, Texas with the US National Security Council in Washington and the American ambassador in Islamabad to discuss the Pakistani crisis. The entire country has been plunged into violence by the assassination, with banks, police stations, government offices, railroad terminals and trains burned and dozens of people killed. Pakistani security forces have been given “shoot on sight” orders against anyone seen to be engaging in “anti-state activities.” Transportation services have been shut down and gas stations closed by government order, leaving huge numbers of people stranded. Under these conditions, the White House and the State Department are publicly calling for parliamentary elections set for January 8 to be held as planned, claiming that to postpone them would dishonor Bhutto’s memory. While even before the assassination, holding these elections with Musharraf still in power would have stripped them of any credibility, to stage them after the killing of the principal opposition leader would render them farcical. The White House sees such an exercise solely as a fig leaf for its imperialist policy in Pakistan, serving the same function as similar votes staged in US-occupied Iraq and Afghanistan. The urgency attached to this exercise is bound up with Washington’s plans for expanded military operations in the country. The day before Bhutto’s assassination, the Washington Post’s national security columnist William Arkin reported, “Beginning early next year, US Special Forces are expected to vastly expand their presence in Pakistan, as part of an effort to train and support indigenous counter-insurgency forces and clandestine counterterrorism units, according to defense officials involved with the planning.” Several days earlier, NBC’s Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski reported that US special operation troops are already “engaged in direct attacks against Al Qaeda inside Pakistan” operating in the tribal regions in the west of the country. The report made it clear that the so-called “trainers” sent by the US are directly involved in combat alongside Pakistani forces. The report also quoted US Defense Secretary Robert Gates as stating, “Al Qaeda right now seems to have turned its face toward Pakistan and attacks against the Pakistani government.”Meanwhile a Pentagon spokesman stressed Friday that Washington is confident that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are “under control.” Nonetheless, there have also been reports that the US military is reviewing contingency plans for a military intervention in the country on the pretext of safeguarding its nuclear arsenal.The mass popular revulsion over the Bhutto assassination has unleashed intense instability in Pakistan. A further unraveling of the political situation could well draw the US military into direct involvement in the attempt to suppress popular upheavals in a country of 165 million people. Source:www.wsws.org/articles/2007/dec2007/bena-d29.shtml------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ *Why? An attempt to explain the unexplainable 14 September 2001 By Rahul Bedi, Jane’s correspondent in New Delhi The origins of last Tuesday’s attack on the United States arguably have their roots in the 1970s. At this time, during the height of the Cold War, a Washington shamed by defeat in Vietnam embarked on a deep, collaborative enterprise to contain the Soviet Union. The genesis of the policy came to a head following the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, when President Jimmy Carter set up a team headed by National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski to employ its ‘death by a thousands cuts’ policy on the tottering Soviet empire, especially the oil- and mineral-rich Central Asian Republics then ruled by Moscow. A marriage of convenience Thus began the US-love affair with Islamists in which short-term profit motivated all parties concerned, but the deadly ramifications of which are haunting the world today and the effects of which were brought home starkly to America earlier this week.
This ‘marriage of convenience’, consummated in an alliance with Islamic fundamentalists, particularly suited the Pakistani military junta of General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq, which was looking for greater strategic depth and economic influence in Afghanistan and Central Asia.
The flip side of the wily general’s agenda was that this alliance with the US would also strengthen Pakistan's military capabilities with respect to rival India with the induction of sophisticated US weaponry at throwaway prices. This was also the time when Pakistan made great strides in developing its covert nuclear capability through a combination of clandestine transactions, outright theft and forging closer military and nuclear relations with China, all connived at by Washington.
The US-led ‘proxy war’ model was based on the premise that Islamists made good anti-Communist allies. The plan was diabolically simple: to hire, train and control motivated Islamic mercenaries. The trainers were mainly from Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, who learnt their craft from American Green Beret commandos and Navy SEALS in various US training establishments. Mass training of Afghan mujahideen was subsequently conducted by the Pakistan Army under the supervision of the elite Special Services Group (SSG), specialists in covert action behind enemy lines and the ISI.
Pakistan’s current military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, spent seven years with the SSG and was also involved in training Afghan mujahideen. Provided he co-operates, he will prove a useful guide to the US in hunting down terrorists inside Afghanistan.
The entire anti-Soviet operation, headed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and held together on the ground by the ISI, was supported by generous donations from the US State Department, Western governments, Saudi Arabia and a handful of commando experts from the UK Special Air Service (SAS), while surveillance training, communication and first aid help came from France.
Israel provided weapons like rifles, tanks and even artillery pieces, captured during its many wars with the Arab states, while Sudan and Algeria contributed committed mujahideen and religious motivation. The entire operation was, inexplicably but amusingly, christened the Safari Club.Fallout from the fighting The fallout of this ‘holy war’, which ended with the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, brought in its wake a series of distinctly ‘unholy wars’ and ‘epidemics of violence’ in places like Kashmir in northern India. It also brought grave unrest to the Central Asian and other former Soviet Republics like Chechnya as well as to North Africa. Now, it has been brought to the US, and to the rest of the world. Over the past decade Afghanistan has been steadily devastated by internecine battles in which the Pakistan-backed Taliban militia has emerged partially victorious. Nearly two million Afghans of the country's population of some four million became refugees in Pakistan, Iran and Central Asia. The majority of those who were part of the jihad became unemployed, lacking food and shelter and, most importantly, patrons. This, in turn, made them ideal recruits for exploitation by the ISI and Pakistan’s increasingly fundamentalist army. According to intelligence estimates over 10,000 Islamic mercenaries, trained in guerrilla warfare and armed with sophisticated weapons, are unemployed in Pakistan today, waiting to be transported to the next jihad. Osama bin Laden was one of many US beneficiaries in its war against Moscow. He spent years in the mid-1980s travelling widely to raise funds and recruit thousands of Muslim youths to fight the Soviets. The rise of Al-QaedaIn 1988, with US knowledge, Bin Laden created Al Qaeda (The Base): a conglomerate of quasi-independent Islamic terrorist cells in countries spread across at least 26 countries, including Algeria, Morocco, Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Burma, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Indonesia, Kenya, Tanzania, Azerbaijan, Dagestan, Uganda, Ethiopia, Syria, Tunisia, Bahrain, Yemen, Bosnia as well as the West Bank and Gaza. Western intelligence sources claim Al Quaeda even has a cell in Xinjiang in China, a country that ironically was another willing partner in the jihad against the Soviets. China wanted the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan for its own strategic ends and even trained and despatched Muslim Uighurs of the western Xinjiang region to fight alongside the Afghan mujahideen. China feared that the old Silk Route along the Karakoram Highway could, in time, come under Moscow's domination if the Soviets were not swiftly dislodged from Kabul. Chinese strategy on this front, however, had a negative fallout for Beijing as the returning Uighur jihadis fuelled the already-simmering insurgency for an independent Muslim Eastern Turkestan in Xinjiang. This insurgency continues, though the Chinese have managed to significantly counter it through economic sops, effective sealing of borders and drowning dissidence using strong-arm methods, actions unquestioned by the outside world. Washington turned a blind eye to Al-Qaeda, confident that it would not directly impinge on the US. By the time the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed in 1998, killing 224 people including 12 Americans, and the ill-fated World Trade Center was similarly attacked around the same time, it was too late for remedial measures. It was this reality that was brought home with such an unimaginable atrocity this week. End of non-subscriber extract © 2007 Jane's Information Group. All rights reserved | Terms of use | Jane's Privacy Policy Jane’s Intelligence and Insight You Can Trust
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Dec 31, 2007 5:36:48 GMT 4
With all the talk of the U.S. sending troops to Pakistan, I'm posting the following articles. The statement below appears at the end of this first essay:As an American, your feelings after reading this mock article must be the same as the feelings of a Pakistani after reading this piece (Pakistan’s Collapse, Our Problem) in the New York Times. America’s Collapse, a Global Problem By: CONCERNED RUSSIAN ANALYSTS. Published: November 18, 2007 AS the government in the United States totters, we must face a fact: Russia simply could not stand by as the world most heavily armed nuclear-armed Unite States descended into the abyss with neocons-zionists calling the shots. We need to think — now — about our feasible military options in the US, should it really come to that after the instability of the coming elections, where the warlords are already calling supporters of Ron Paul as terrorists. Polarization between the forces of war and forces of peace is growing by the day. We do not intend to be fear mongers. Most of the United States’ officer corps and ruling elites, with the exception a few like General Boykin, remain largely moderate and more interested in keeping the US a democratic state than in terrorising the world with more wars or nuclear weapons as some are doing in the case of Iran. But then again, Russians and most of the world felt similarly before the antics of hawkish administration before the war on Iraq. We thought, peace protestors will hold the administration from lying and launching a war of aggression on the basis of lies. Moreover, the CIA and other contains enough sympathizers and supporters of the neo-cons totalitarians, not to speak of the Christian Zionists who want to expedite the march towards Armageddon. There are enough totalitarians in the US bent on seizing the whole Middle East where they believe the final conflict between the good and evil will take place, that there are grounds for real worries. The most likely possible dangers are these: a complete collapse of the United States as we know it that allows an extreme neo-cons and Christian Zionists movement to fill the vacuum; a total loss of federal control over Bible Belt states, which splinter along religious lines; or a struggle within the American military in which the minority sympathetic to Zionists and neocons try to establish United States as an empire dominating the world through terrorism. Any possible military initiative to avoid those possibilities is daunting. With all the nuclear weapons, distance and huge population, America cannot be militarily controlled from outside. It is impossible to take a long time to move large numbers of Russian forces halfway across the world. And unless we had precise information about the location of all of American nuclear weapons and materials, we could not rely on ICBM or using Special Forces to destroy them. The task of stabilizing a collapsed United States is beyond the means of Russia and its allies. Thus, if we have any hope of success, we would have to act before a complete government collapse, and we would need the cooperation of moderate American forces. One possible plan would be a Special Forces operation with the limited goal of preventing America’s nuclear materials and warheads from getting into the wrong hands which are bent upon launching wars upon wars. Given the degree to which American patriots cherish these assets, it is unlikely Russia would get permission to destroy them. Somehow, American forces would have to team with cooperating Americans to secure critical sites and possibly to move the material to a safer place. For Russia, the safest bet would be shipping the material to someplace like Siberia; but even pro-Russian Americans would be unlikely to cooperate. More likely, we would have to settle for establishing a remote redoubt within the United States, with the nuclear technology guarded by elite American forces backed up (and watched over) by crack international troops. It is realistic to think that such a mission might be undertaken within days of a decision to act. The price for rapid action and secrecy, however, would probably be a very small international coalition. A second, broader option would involve supporting the core of the American armed forces as they sought to hold the country together in the face of an ineffective government, seceding some states to nihilist necons and some CIA elements assassination attempts against the moderate leadership. This would require a sizable combat force — not only from Russia, but ideally also other China and moderate Western powers. Even if we were not so threatened with retaliation by extreme elements in the United States, Russian and moderate Western powers would need months to get the troops to the US to save it from annihilating the world. Fortunately, given the longstanding effectiveness of America’s security forces, any process of state decline probably would be gradual, giving us the time to act. So, if we got a large number of troops into the country with the help of leadership in American military, what would they do? The most likely directive would be to help American military and security forces hold the country’s center — primarily the region around Washington. We would also have to be wary of internecine warfare within the American security forces. Pro-peace moderates could well win a fight against neocons sympathizers on their own. But they might need help if splinter forces or Christian Zionists took control of parts of the country containing crucial nuclear materials. The task of retaking any such regions and reclaiming custody of any nuclear weapons would be a priority for our troops. If a holding operation in the nation’s center was successful, we would probably then seek to establish order in the parts of America where extremists operate. Beyond propping up the state, this would benefit Russian efforts in the Middle East by depriving terrorists of the sanctuaries they have long enjoyed to dominate the Middle East and secure oil supplies. The great paradox of the post-cold war world is that we are both safer, day to day, and in greater peril than before. There was a time when crisis in the US would have been welcomed; today it is as far more a threat to the global order because after some initial successes under Bush-II presidency, the neocons believe they are well on the march to take over the United States and the rest of the world. We must be militarily and diplomatically prepared to keep ourselves safe in such a world. Pakistan may be the next big test. As an American, your feelings after reading this mock article must be the same as the feelings of a Pakistani after reading this piece (Pakistan’s Collapse, Our Problem) in the New York Times. Source: www.icssa.org/article_detail_parse.php?a_id=1216&rel=1214,1176&pg=1&m_link=15&slink=10&m_id=15 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Pakistan’s Collapse, Our Problem Monday, November 19, 2007 - 06:44 AM EST - 88 Reads Section: De facto Colonization Written with imperial arrogance and a colonial mindset. They talk as if they own the world and the universe. As if other nations don't have a right to anything - from self-determination and self-rule to self defence. See how easily they are talking about collaborators and traitors and calling them pro-America moderates. Imagine some American generals selling American defence mechanism to Russian and fighting their own people who would resist American property and assets taken by Russians or any other force from outside. Would these writers consider them moderate pro-peace individuals? With this kind of mentality they will only bring more death and destruction on the world. And note how prominently it has been published in the New York Times. Even Nazis couldn't speak so openly, so casually and so shamelessly about such plans in the "mainstream media."
The solution these analysts with warlords mentality propose is part of the plan which helps support tyranny so that it could lead to chaos and anarchy and the way is paved for an invasion and neutralization of the military power of Pakistan. The objective remains the same as it was in the case of a war on Iraq and what it is in the case of plans for a war on Iran. Only the strategy for neutralising the military power of Pakistan is different. Only if the smartest man in Pakistan could realize it. Also see: America’s Collapse, a Global Problem [posted above]And the plan has been in place for quite some time. Read this from 2005: Softening the High Value Target Under Way www.dictatorshipwatch.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2647&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0November 18, 2007 NY Times, Op-Ed Contributors Pakistan’s Collapse, Our Problem By FREDERICK W. KAGAN and MICHAEL O’HANLON Washington AS the government of Pakistan totters, we must face a fact: the United States simply could not stand by as a nuclear-armed Pakistan descended into the abyss. Nor would it be strategically prudent to withdraw our forces from an improving situation in Iraq to cope with a deteriorating one in Pakistan. We need to think — now — about our feasible military options in Pakistan, should it really come to that. We do not intend to be fear mongers. Pakistan’s officer corps and ruling elites remain largely moderate and more interested in building a strong, modern state than in exporting terrorism or nuclear weapons to the highest bidder. But then again, Americans felt similarly about the shah’s regime in Iran until it was too late. Moreover, Pakistan’s intelligence services contain enough sympathizers and supporters of the Afghan Taliban, and enough nationalists bent on seizing the disputed province of Kashmir from India, that there are grounds for real worries. The most likely possible dangers are these: a complete collapse of Pakistani government rule that allows an extreme Islamist movement to fill the vacuum; a total loss of federal control over outlying provinces, which splinter along ethnic and tribal lines; or a struggle within the Pakistani military in which the minority sympathetic to the Taliban and Al Qaeda try to establish Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism. All possible military initiatives to avoid those possibilities are daunting. With 160 million people, Pakistan is more than five times the size of Iraq. It would take a long time to move large numbers of American forces halfway across the world. And unless we had precise information about the location of all of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and materials, we could not rely on bombing or using Special Forces to destroy them. The task of stabilizing a collapsed Pakistan is beyond the means of the United States and its allies. Rule-of-thumb estimates suggest that a force of more than a million troops would be required for a country of this size. Thus, if we have any hope of success, we would have to act before a complete government collapse, and we would need the cooperation of moderate Pakistani forces. One possible plan would be a Special Forces operation with the limited goal of preventing Pakistan’s nuclear materials and warheads from getting into the wrong hands. Given the degree to which Pakistani nationalists cherish these assets, it is unlikely the United States would get permission to destroy them. Somehow, American forces would have to team with Pakistanis to secure critical sites and possibly to move the material to a safer place. For the United States, the safest bet would be shipping the material to someplace like New Mexico; but even pro-American Pakistanis would be unlikely to cooperate. More likely, we would have to settle for establishing a remote redoubt within Pakistan, with the nuclear technology guarded by elite Pakistani forces backed up (and watched over) by crack international troops. It is realistic to think that such a mission might be undertaken within days of a decision to act. The price for rapid action and secrecy, however, would probably be a very small international coalition. A second, broader option would involve supporting the core of the Pakistani armed forces as they sought to hold the country together in the face of an ineffective government, seceding border regions and Al Qaeda and Taliban assassination attempts against the leadership. This would require a sizable combat force — not only from the United States, but ideally also other Western powers and moderate Muslim nations. Even if we were not so committed in Iraq and Afghanistan, Western powers would need months to get the troops there. Fortunately, given the longstanding effectiveness of Pakistan’s security forces, any process of state decline probably would be gradual, giving us the time to act. So, if we got a large number of troops into the country, what would they do? The most likely directive would be to help Pakistan’s military and security forces hold the country’s center — primarily the region around the capital, Islamabad, and the populous areas like Punjab Province to its south. We would also have to be wary of internecine warfare within the Pakistani security forces. Pro-American moderates could well win a fight against extremist sympathizers on their own. But they might need help if splinter forces or radical Islamists took control of parts of the country containing crucial nuclear materials. The task of retaking any such regions and reclaiming custody of any nuclear weapons would be a priority for our troops. If a holding operation in the nation’s center was successful, we would probably then seek to establish order in the parts of Pakistan where extremists operate. Beyond propping up the state, this would benefit American efforts in Afghanistan by depriving terrorists of the sanctuaries they have long enjoyed in Pakistan’s tribal and frontier regions. The great paradox of the post-cold war world is that we are both safer, day to day, and in greater peril than before. There was a time when volatility in places like Pakistan was mostly a humanitarian worry; today it is as much a threat to our basic security as Soviet tanks once were. We must be militarily and diplomatically prepared to keep ourselves safe in such a world. Pakistan may be the next big test. Frederick W. Kagan is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Michael O’Hanlon is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Source: www.dictatorshipwatch.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2647&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ U.S. Troops to Head to Pakistan 27 Dec 2007 Beginning early next year, U.S. Special Forces are expected to vastly expand their presence in Pakistan, as part of an effort to train and support indigenous counter-insurgency forces and clandestine counterterrorism units, according to defense officials involved with the planning. A new agreement, reported when it was still being negotiated last month, has been finalized. And the first U.S. personnel could be on the ground in Pakistan by early in the new year, according to Pentagon sources. See: blog.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2007/12/musharrafs_woes_have_opened_a.html
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Dec 31, 2007 17:58:36 GMT 4
Pakistan: Violent state repression of protests over Bhutto assassinationBy Keith Jones 31 December 2007 Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on Saturday ordered the military and other security forces to take whatever measures were necessary to quell rioting sparked by last Thursday’s assassination of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader, former prime minister and current prime ministerial candidate Benazir Bhutto. Musharraf directed that persons involved in rioting be charged under Pakistan’s notorious Anti-Terrorism Act. Military forces had already been deployed on the streets of major Pakistani cities, especially in Bhutto’s native province of Sindh. On Friday, the entire country was shut down by a general strike. Press reports Sunday said the death toll from rioting was at least 44, but failed to provide a breakdown as to the number of persons who died at the hands of the police and military. The rioters targeted business and symbols of the government, including government buildings, police posts, railway stations and election commission offices, as well as the offices and homes of politicians associated with the Pakistan Muslim League (Q), the military-sponsored, pro-Musharraf party. Although Bhutto was participating in the national and provincial assembly elections scheduled for January 8, she had repeatedly accused the Musharraf regime of preparing to rig the elections and had pointed to a vast number of irregularities. She had complained that the local government bodies charged with supervising the elections remain in the hands of toadies of the military regime. Most Pakistanis hold Pakistan’s US-backed military government responsible for Bhutto’s death. If it, or elements in Pakistan’s military-intelligence apparatus, did not directly organize the assassination, they facilitated it by failing to provide Bhutto with elementary security. Bhutto herself had repeatedly complained that the government refused to meet her basic security requests, including the provision of full security support, armoured vehicles, and bomb-jamming equipment. She had publicly charged elements in the military-intelligence apparatus, although not Musharraf himself, with being responsible for an attempt on her life on October 18 that killed 140 people. The Washington Post cited a 30-year-old truck driver as saying of the anti-government protests, “These are the sentiments of the people. This is their natural reaction.” Popular sentiment against the regime has only hardened in recent days as numerous contradictions have emerged in the government’s account of how Bhutto was assassinated. The Bush administration, meanwhile, has rallied around Musharraf, absolving the dictator and Pakistan’s military-intelligence apparatus of any responsibility for Bhutto’s death. The Pakistani military has been a close ally of the Pentagon for the past five decades. Musharraf’s government has provided pivotal support to the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and otherwise supported Washington’s geopolitical aims in Central and South Asia and the Middle East, earning the military commander who took power in a 1999 coup the Bush administration’s laurels as a “key ally in the war on terror.” In recent weeks, Musharraf has allowed for a contingent of US Special Forces said to be several hundred strong to begin operating in Pakistan, where they are to take the leading role in efforts to stamp out support within Pakistan for those fighting against the US occupation regime in Afghanistan. Predictably, the Bush administration and the pliant US media have taken up the Musharraf regime’s refrain that the assassination was the work solely of Islamicist extremists. This ignores the decades-long ties between Pakistan’s military-security apparatus and radical Islamic fundamentalist groups, including the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and the intense hostility of the military toward Bhutto and her PPP. Benazir Bhutto’s father, Zulfikhar Ali Bhutto, who led Pakistan for six years in the 1970s, was deposed in a military coup in 1977 and hanged under the US-backed military dictator General Zia-ul Haq two years later. When asked on Friday whether Washington would continue to support Musharraf, US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher made it clear that withdrawal of US backing was out of the question. “The option is to fight or not to fight terrorism,” he said. Boucher also took exception to a reporter’s suggestion that the Musharraf regime had failed to adequately protect Bhutto. “I think that starts to pre-judge what happened on Thursday,” he said. A Pentagon spokesman took a similar line Saturday, declaring, “I don’t know how foolproof you can make any security when people are willing to kill themselves.” Initial reports, including from the Pakistani government, said Bhutto, on leaving a campaign rally in Rawalpindi, had been shot just before a suicide-bomber blew himself up. But on Friday, Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier Javed Iqbal Cheema asserted that Bhutto had not been hit by any bullets. Rather, he said Bhutto died as a result of hitting her head on a lever on the sun roof of the car in which she was riding. Bhutto was standing and waving to PPP supporters when the attack began. Cheema’s claims have been challenged by eye witnesses. Farooq Naik, Bhutto’s principal lawyer and himself a senior PPP leader, called the government claims “baseless” and “a pack of lies.” He said, “Two bullets hit her, one in the abdomen and one in the head. Bhutto’s personal secretary Neheed Khan and party official Makhdoom Amin Fahim were in the car and they saw what happened.” Sherry Rehman, a PPP spokesperson who travelled with Bhutto to the Rawalpindi hospital where she died, and who later prepared her body for burial, told Reuters that Bhutto “has a bullet wound at the back of her head on the left side. It came out the other (side). That was a very large wound, and she bled profusely through that.” Rehman continued, “She was even bleeding while we were bathing her for the burial. The government is now trying to say she concussed herself, which is ludicrous. It is really dangerous nonsense.” The government’s version of event is also manifestly at odds with a videotape shown on Dawn News TV Saturday evening. Shot by an amateur photographer, the video shows an armed assassin shooting at Bhutto while she waves to the crowd through the sunroof of her car. It also clearly shows that Bhutto had disappeared into the car before the bomb blast, and that there was no security cordon around her vehicle. Yet the Musharraf regime is determined to stick with its bizarre explanation of Bhutto’s death. “We gave you absolute facts... corroborated by the doctor’s report,” said Cheema on Saturday. According to a New York Times on-line report posted Sunday, “Pakistani and Western security experts... believed the government’s insistence that Ms. Bhutto was not killed by a bullet was designed to deflect attention from the lack of government security around her vehicle as she left the park in the city [Rawalpindi] where the Pakistani Army keeps its headquarters, and where the powerful Inter Services Intelligence agency has a strong presence...” But there are other explanations. Shooting a person in a crowd—there have also been reports of a sniper—demands a higher degree of skill and training than detonating a suicide bomb. Death by shooting involves bullets and a murder weapon, both of which may provide significant clues as to the origins of the assassination plot. In this regard, it is also important to note that within minutes of Bhutto’s assassination, authorities ordered the crime scene hosed down. The water wiped away blood stains and, with them, potentially crucial DNA evidence that might have identified the suicide-bomber. That the government is lying to the Pakistani people is demonstrated by an open letter issued by Athar Minallah, a member of Rawalpindi General Hospital’s board of directors. Minallah explains that Dr. Mohammad Mussadiq Khan, a professor of surgery at the hospital, had determined the evening of Bhutto’s death that its cause was a bullet wound. But he had not put that in his medical report because, under Pakistani law, only an autopsy can determine the cause of death. Despite protests from the attending physicians, Rawalpindi Chief of Police Aziz Saud had refused, however, to order one. As for the government’s claim that a leader of Pakistan’s Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, masterminded the assassination, it has been publicly disputed by a spokesman for Mehsud and the authorities have provided no evidence whatsoever in support of their claim. Since he humiliated the military last summer by organizing the capture of 300 Pakistani troops in Waziristan, Mehsud has been blamed by the government for a series of attacks, including the October 18 attempt to kill Bhutto. PPP spokesman Farhatullah Babar said the claim that Mehsud was the author of Bhutto’s murder appears to be “a planted story, an incorrect story, because they want to divert attention.” So full of holes is the Pakistan government’s story, the Bush administration is itself worried that it is fuelling popular sentiment against the regime and discrediting Musharraf’s American sponsors. A major debate is apparently underway within the Bush administration as to whether it should urge Islamabad allow an international investigation of the assassination. For several days after Bhutto’s murder the Bush administration was insisting that the elections should go ahead as scheduled on January 8 despite the killing of the most important opposition leader. The elections were bogus from the beginning. They were “prepared” by a six-week state of emergency during which Musharraf purged the judiciary so as to remove all legal-constitutional impediments to his being re-elected as president. Under the emergency decree, Musharraf ordered thousands of arrests and introduced draconian censorship laws and restrictions on political activity that remain in effect. But to now claim that an election following the assassination of the chief opposition figure, with the regime itself widely suspected of complicity, would be “an exercise in democracy” is laughable. It now appears that the Election Commission will decide Monday to postpone the elections, possibly for up to four months. For more than a year, the Bush administration has been seeking to prevent the increasingly unpopular Musharraf regime from unravelling by erecting a democratic façade. This focused on a push for a power-sharing deal between Musharraf and Bhutto and her PPP. Bhutto, for her part, was more than willing, in return for a share of the spoils of office, to work with Washington, the sponsor of a succession of military dictatorships in Pakistan, and Musharraf, whose government, in addition to throttling the Pakistani people’s democratic rights, has imposed socially incendiary neo-liberal polices. In the wake of Musharraf’s emergency and now Bhutto’s assassination, the creation of a democratic fig leaf for Musharraf’s dictatorship remains the Bush administration’s policy. According to an article in Sunday’s Washington Post, “Despite anxiety among intelligence officials and experts... the administration is only slightly tweaking a course charted over the past 18 months to support the creation of a political center revolving around Musharraf... “‘Plan A still has to work,’ said a senior administration official involved in Pakistan policy. ‘We all have to appeal to moderate forces to come together and carry the election and create a more solidly based government, then use that as a platform to fight the terrorists.’” Toward this end, Boucher, US Undersecretary for Political Affairs Nicolas Burns and other US officials have pressed Pakistan’s other major opposition party, the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), to backtrack on the decision it announced in the wake of Bhutto’s assassination to boycott the elections. According to the Post, the US’s other objective is to prevent the disintegration of the PPP, whose election campaign revolved entirely around the personal appeal of “chairperson for life” Benazir Bhutto and invocations of her “martyred” father’s legacy. Meeting Sunday, the PPP executive chose Benazir Bhutto’s 19-year-old son, Bilawal Bhutto, an Oxford university student, as PPP chairman. Bhutto’s husband, Asif Ali Zardari, who earned the nickname “Mr. 10 Percent” because of the kickbacks he extracted while serving as investment minister in Benazir Bhutto’s second cabinet, will serve as PPP co-chair.The dynastic character of the PPP’s succession underscores the anti-democratic nature of the party. While the PPP has in the past projected itself as an “Islamic socialist party” and today still claims to be the party of Pakistan’s toilers, the Bhuttos themselves are one of the great landowning families of Sindh, whose rural regions are infamous for the feudal-type oppression that still prevails.Zardari let it be known that the PPP will still contest the elections, whenever they are held. Showing that class interests are thicker than blood, he made an open appeal to the military, saying that the PPP’s struggle is with “a section of people in the government,” not the armed forces. He also denounced those who had raised Sindh separatist slogans at the funeral of his wife. Source: www.wsws.org/articles/2007/dec2007/paki-d31.shtml------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Does Pakistan exist?by A. H. Amin (Saturday, October 6, 2007) "Pakistan's fate is Balkanization and disgrace. What better can be expected with shameless opportunists like Musharraf and Benazir?" The Pakistan Army's Generals have always given the impression that they are more clean than the angels are and infallible. General Musharraf who usurped power like a warlord in October 1999 set up an investigation and accountability body known as National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in 1999. An enormous amount of Pakistan's state money was spent on this NAB. Many cases were established against so-called corrupt politicians. Today, the Pakistani tinpot military junta has dropped all proved cases against ex-Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. It has been stated that this has been done under US pressure. Because Benazir is a declared collaborator of the United States. Because she has stated that she will support a US strike on Pakistan to find Osama Bin Laden. The US game plan is to have Benazir as Prime Minister and Musharraf as President and kill Muslims in Waziristan and other places like dogs. My question is that "Does Pakistan Exist at all “? Is it a sovereign state at all? About the army, history is very clear. In 1857, the soldiers from both Punjab and present NWFP were loyal collaborators of the English East India Company in the war of independence of 1857 against the Muslims fighting against the British in Delhi and other parts of India. This was so, because 5 % Sikh minority from 1799 to 1849 subjugated the Muslims of Punjab and NWFP. Badshahi Masjid of Lahore was a stable. Later the Pathans gained awareness and they fought against the British but most of the Punjabi Muslim soldier remained good British collaborators. Specially, those from Jhelum and Rawalpindi Districts who fired on British orders even on the Holy Kaaba in Hejjaz Operations. The Pashtuns vindicated their honour by fighting against the British from 1863 to 1947. The Sindhis and Baloch also fought against the British. In Punjab, the Sikh Jats and even the illiterate Muslims fought against the British but the Muslims, North of River Chenab, were good British mercenaries. Today, they are good American mercenaries. Now the Pakistan Army will have a good leadership with long tradition of collaboration with the foreign powers. Gone are the likes of Mir Mast Afridi who instead of fighting for their British masters like the races North of Chenab River went over to the Germans with 14 other Afridis and were awarded the Iron Cross. Mr. Jinnah the founder of Pakistan did say once, “Punjab is a hopeless place and I will never go there again.” Now the patriot Muslims are only left in Waziristan and North Balochistan. Now the US will use Pakistan's shameless military and civil leaders to kill Muslims. What is the qualification of an army chief that he is a true soldier. Has seen action. Has been a good military leader in combat. In Pakistan, what is the qualification of an army chief? That he is a reliable foreign stooge. That he was cultivated by the US or British intelligence while he attended a course at Royal College of Defense Studies or at Fort Leavenworth like Zia or many others. That he is pro-West and would gladly massacre Patriotic Pashtuns of Waziristan and other Muslims. My question is why Pakistan was created if it was to remain a foreign, i.e. British or American, pawn. If collaborators like Iskandar Mirza Ayub and Zia were to rule it - why it was created? Does it exist at all? If one phone call from a US President and now even US Secretary of State overawes Pakistan's President into abject submission, does this state exist? It is very clear that the US and its NATO allies have launched a Crusade against all Muslims. If Pakistan’s President is a US pawn and if his handpicked Generals are the US pawns, does Pakistan exist? My idea is that Pakistan lost the right of existence after Bush kicked it after 9/11 and its so-called commando military usurper submitted like a slave. Why was India divided if Pakistan was to be a British or US pawn? Why all this drama? Even Mr. Jinnah knew that this state could not exist without US aid. Why this ugly drama with Indo-Pak Muslims? If the Pakistan Army's Generals are rationalizing Pakistan's existence by shameless collaboration with the US - If they want to lick their own spit by negotiating with Benazir because the US is kicking them to do so and they are kissing the feet of their US masters, I state with conviction that Pakistan does not exist. It has lost the moral right to existence. History will vindicate this statement. Pakistan's fate is Balkanization and disgrace. What better can be expected with shameless opportunists like Musharraf and Benazir? A soldier is happy dying with sword in hand. Here we have a General who glorifies shameless submission to a foreign power, the US, as strategic brilliance. Here we have a shameless Rani Jindan who invited the English East India Company to invade Punjab in 1845, now welcoming the US strike on Pakistan to find Osama Bin Laden. All that we believed has been shattered. Gone is the idealism. What we have now are shameless Generals and politicians shamelessly panting like desperate pointer dogs and bitches to collaborate with USA against patriot Muslims. May be, the best option is a US strike on Pakistan so that we are totally disintegrated and then we unite and become rocks after careful regeneration. A. H Amin is a writer, journalist, ex editor of Defence Journal (Pakistan), ex Editor of Globe (Pakistan); author of "Indo Pak Wars from 1947 to 1971," "Man's Role in History" and "Land of the Pure (short stories)." He contributed this article to Media Monitors Network (MMN) from Sindh, Pakistan. Source: usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/46498
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Jan 6, 2008 13:13:53 GMT 4
Right; like the CIA doesn't already have 'broad powers' within Pakistan through the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI)...MichelleCIA to get broad powers to act inside Pak: Report6 Jan 2008, 1028 hrs IST,AFP WASHINGTON: The administration of President George W Bush is considering granting the Pentagon and CIA new authority to conduct covert operations in the tribal areas of Pakistan where Al-Qaida is showing new strength, The New York Times reported on its website late Saturday. Citing unnamed senior administration officials, the newspaper said the plan calls for giving Central Intelligence Agency agents broader powers to strike selected targets inside the country, in some cases using intelligence provided by Pakistani sources. Up to now, most counterterrorism operations in Pakistan have been conducted by CIA operatives based in Afghanistan, the report said. If the plan is given final approval, the US spy agency would continue to do the same, but would be able to call for help from the US military or deputize some special operations forces of to act under the authority of the agency, according to the paper. The United States now has about 50 soldiers in Pakistan, the report said. Hundreds of Al-Qaida and Taliban insurgents took shelter in the rugged northwestern region of Pakistan after US-led forces overthrew the hardline Taliban regime in Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. It is believed Al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden might be hiding in the area under the protection of sympathetic Islamic leaders. The plan was discussed by Vice President Richard Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and top White House national security aides on Friday when they met at the White House to reassess US strategy in the wake of last month's assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, The Times said. The US government has not formally presented its proposals to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf or the new army commander, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the report noted. But several of the participants of Friday's meeting argued that the threat to the Musharraf government was now so grave that both he and Pakistani generals were likely to give the United States more latitude for action, the paper pointed out. Source: tinyurl.com/2hn7wz
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Jan 12, 2008 14:16:12 GMT 4
US Would 'Regret' Pakistan OperationBy CHRIS BRUMMITT – 19 hours ago ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — President Pervez Musharraf said in an interview published Friday that U.S. troops would be regarded as invaders if they crossed into Pakistan to hunt al-Qaida militants. He also said he would resign if opposition parties tried to impeach him after next month's elections. [remember this statement!...M]Musharraf's remarks in an interview with Singapore's The Straits Times came as police tried to identify a suicide bomber who struck a day earlier in Lahore, killing 24 people and adding to pressure on the former general as he struggles to stay in office eight years after seizing power in military coup. Pakistan is under growing U.S. pressure to crack down on militants in its tribal regions close to the Afghan border. The rugged area has long been considered a likely hiding place for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, as well as an operating ground for Taliban militants planning attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan. The New York Times reported last week that Washington was considering expanding the authority of the CIA and the U.S. military to launch aggressive covert operations within the tribal regions. Several U.S. presidential candidates have also hinted they would support unilateral action in the area. Musharraf told The Straits Times U.S. troops would "certainly" be considered invaders if they set foot in the tribal regions. "If they come without our permission, that's against the sovereignty of Pakistan. I challenge anybody coming into our mountains. They would regret that day," he said in the interview. Musharraf is also under gathering domestic political pressure. The party of slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and the other main opposition grouping are predicted to make gains in the Feb. 18 election. They have vowed to oust Musharraf if they emerge as winners. Musharraf is seen as vulnerable to impeachment over his decision last year to fire Supreme Court judges and suspend the constitution. "If that (impeachment) happens, let me assure that I'd be leaving office before they would do anything. If they won with this kind of majority and they formed a government that had the intention of doing this, I wouldn't like to stick around," he said. "I would like to quit the scene." Thursday's blast targeting police officers outside the High Court in the eastern city of Lahore was the latest in a series of bloody attacks. At least 20 suicide bombers have struck in the past three months, killing 400 people, many of them from the security forces — the most intense period of terrorist strikes here since Pakistan allied with the U.S. in its war against al-Qaida and other extremist groups in 2001. Lahore police chief investigator Tasaddaq Hussain said the mutilated head of the suicide bomber had been recovered and would be reconstructed for identification. The bomber's other remains were being examined by forensic experts to extract DNA, he said. "This is an act of terrorism and militants are to be blamed for it," Hussain said. Later, about 200 lawyers prayed for the victims outside the court and laid flowers at the scene. Police said the attacker was amid some 70 officers in riot gear when he detonated explosives on his body. All but three of the dead were police. There was no claim of responsibility. The government has blamed previous attacks on Islamic radicals allied with al-Qaida and the Taliban sheltering in the tribal regions along the Afghan border. Musharraf blamed the same militants for the Dec. 27 gun-and-suicide-bomb attack that killed Bhutto, a secular former prime minister who had repeatedly pledged to battle Islamic extremism in this country of 160 million people. Bhutto's supporters have questioned whether elements within the government may have had a role in her slaying and are demanding an independent U.N. investigation. To allay critics, Musharraf last week invited British police to help investigate. Source: tinyurl.com/3xhhff------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Report: Musharraf warns U.S. on intervention www.chinaview.cn 2008-01-11 14:31:52 SINGAPORE, Jan. 11 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan's president Pervez Musharraf warned that any unilateral intervention in his country by coalition forces fighting in Afghanistan would be treated as an invasion, according to an interview with Singapore's English daily The Straits Times published Friday. "Any entry by the United States or coalition forces into Pakistan's tribal areas would be resisted as a breach of Pakistan's sovereignty," Musharraf told the newspaper. Four American Democratic politicians contending for the party's nomination for the race to the White House, have called for U.S. forces now in neighboring Afghanistan to join the Pakistan Army's counter-insurgency campaign and to hunt down Al-Qaida Leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan's tribal areas. The president said, "I challenge anybody coming into our mountains. They would regret that day." He also criticized U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton's proposal to place Pakistan's nuclear weapons under supervision of the U.S. and the UK. He told The Straits Times that her statement was "an intrusion into our privacy, into our sensitivity... She doesn't seem to understand how well-guarded these assets are." During the interview, he also said he would resign if a government that emerged from the coming election sought his impeachment. He told The Straits Times that some countries, unlike many Western media, understood Pakistan's problems. "The Western media want to impose their understanding of democracy and human rights on our developing countries, while China and other eastern countries don't," he said. Editor: Sun Yunlong Source:news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-01/11/content_7405516.htm
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Jan 24, 2008 17:32:09 GMT 4
U.S. commander orders plans on PakistanAfghan President Hamid Karzai said about Benzir Bhutto, "She sacrificed her life, for the sake of Pakistan and for the sake of this region.” This is an interesting statement when you figure in who placed Hamid Karzai in postion...You'll see what I mean in a moment.
The good people of Pakistan rallied around Bhutto's assassination like she was some kind of martyr for equal footing among the masses, democracy, and prosperity within Pakistan.....Well, I guess Pakistan has its own form of Republicans too.
She was seen as a savior for relief from military rule and the begining of civilian government. It was also thrown out there that the U.S. wanted Bhutto to share power as a means to a stable Pakistan in order to defeat terrorism. Dream on, folks; Washington and its handlers want a chaotic Pakistan to ensure the continuation of U.S. rule via Musharraf and continued U.S. and I.S.I. support for terror....But there's more to it than that.
Benazir Bhutto had her own dynastic political ambitions; not to anger some here, maybe she did have a less than self-centered idealism; the fact is, it doesn't matter at all what she had in mind for herself or Pakistan. She was ruthlessly exploited to lead her to a predictable death. Bhutto was carefully groomed to be a politically expedient sacrificial lamb...a crucified [or in this case, shot] savior, used to ensure internal chaos within Pakistan and to create concern, meaning fear, throughout the rest of the duped global masses.
I had said in a previous post here: "I hope to God I'm wrong on this, but if you want to pray, you'd better pray that the U.S. doesn't step in to help you. Plus there's the fact that India is sucking up to the U.S. and her defense industries."
Think about the following: The U.S. is in alliance with both Pakistan and Indian, yet Pakistan and Indian are enemies. "The Bush administration's anxiety about Pakistan's stability has grown in recent months, not only because of its potential implications for U.S. stability efforts in neighboring Afghanistan but also because of worry about the security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal." But India has a larger nuclear arsenal than Pakistan....hmmm...there's one in the back pocket, if one wants to stir up more chaos in the area, at any given time. But let's not concentrate on that...just keep that in your mind if the game changes in the future.
Musharraf is also a U.S. ally against terror, yet there is a path from Musharraf via I.S.I. to the terrorist enemy, the Taliban. One more setup for the continuation of the permanent 'war on terror.' It also keeps Pakistan from competing economically within Western ruled capitalism; and I'm not talking about just the U.S. here....Europe and the U.S. are currently discussing plans to form an economic union in order not to be overcome by emerging nations. [I can't help thinking here how fortuitous the collapse of the dollar is...for some, anyway] First U.S. troops come in to unleash political and economic chaos in selected Muslim and African states and destroy society, doing the really dirty work...hell we're the world's favorite empire to hate....and then, in the truth of it all, after the U.S. crushes a country, NATO troops can be employed permanently within nation states rendered compliant for G8 exploitation.
So, as the following article points out [or actually, greasing the wheel for another move in the Take Over the World Game and public indoctrination for submission], here's the help from the U.S. I mused about earlier for Pakistan...it is the result of engineered chaos, which the Bhutto assassination cemented. The rest is history; only on a bigger scale than any form of colonialism we've ever seen in earlier eras. Go ahead, keep despising the Bush administration along with we stupid Americans [who, by the way, have our own hands full with an emerging police state, unending draconian legislation, and a frightful looming economic collapse]...it keeps your eye off the real ball in play......Michelle
url for this post and commentary:tinyurl.com/3aehw7U.S. commander orders plans on Pakistan By ROBERT BURNS Wed Jan 23, 10:34 PM ET WASHINGTON -The commander of U.S. forces in Central Asia has launched planning for more extensive use of U.S. troops to train Pakistani armed forces, a senior defense official said Wednesday. Adm. William J. Fallon, commander of U.S. Central Command, issued a planning order, an internal instruction to lower-level commanders, to propose ideas for a long-term approach to helping Pakistan combat what has become an expanding, homegrown insurgency that threatens the stability of the government. Fallon's intent is to develop new approaches to help Pakistan, with a time horizon stretching to 2015, the official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the order has not been made public. A central assumption in the planning is that no such U.S. training contribution would be made without the Pakistani government's prior approval, the official said. Fallon was in Pakistan this week meeting with senior Pakistani military officials. In an interview last week during a conference with Middle Eastern defense chiefs in Florida, Fallon said Pakistan is taking a more welcoming view of U.S. suggestions for using American troops to train and advise its own forces in the fight against anti-government extremists. Fallon said he believes increased violence inside Pakistan in recent months has led Pakistani leaders to conclude that they must focus more intensively on extremist al-Qaida hideouts near the border with Afghanistan. "They see they've got real problems internally," Fallon said. "My sense is there is an increased willingness to address these problems, and we're going to try to help them." He said U.S. assistance would be "more robust," but he offered few details. "There is more willingness to do that now" on Pakistan's part, he said.The Bush administration's anxiety about Pakistan's stability has grown in recent months, not only because of its potential implications for U.S. stability efforts in neighboring Afghanistan but also because of worry about the security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met Wednesday with Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf, the highest-level meeting of U.S. and Pakistan officials since the assassination last month of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. While Rice praised Musharraf as a steadfast ally and promised continued U.S. support, she pressed him to keep his commitment to democracy and to free and fair elections in February.At the Pentagon, one of Fallon's subordinate commanders, Army Maj. Gen. David Rodriguez, said the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan is unlikely to stage a spring offensive in the volatile eastern region bordering Pakistan. Rodriguez, who commands U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan, told a Pentagon news conference that Taliban and al-Qaida fighters operating from havens in the largely ungoverned tribal areas of western Pakistan appear to have shifted their focus toward targets inside Pakistan rather than across the border in Afghanistan."I don't think there'll be a big spring offensive this year," Rodriguez said. That is partly due to ordinary Afghans' disillusionment with the Taliban movement, he said, and partly because the Taliban and al-Qaida fighters see new opportunities to accelerate instability inside Pakistan. He also said Afghan security forces are becoming more effective partners with U.S. forces.The Taliban generally has staged stepped-up offensives each spring, when the weather is more favorable for ground movement, although an anticipated offensive last spring did not materialize. U.S. officials have said in recent days that they do expect a spring offensive in the southern area of Afghanistan, a traditional Taliban stronghold where fighting is most intense. That is one reason Defense Secretary Robert Gates last week approved the deployment of an additional 2,200 Marines to the southern sector, where NATO forces are in command.In all, there are about 28,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, of whom roughly half are under Rodriguez's command. Rodriguez said he needs no more U.S. troops in his area but looks forward to having two more Afghan National Army brigades, due to begin operating in his sector this spring. Rodriguez also said he sees no sign that the United States is preparing to send forces into Pakistan without the Pakistan government's approval. "We're not planning that," he said. "Pakistan is a sovereign government, and we have no plans that I'm involved in or have even heard of to do anything like that." On Capitol Hill, the House Armed Services Committee heard testimony from retired Army Lt. Gen. David Barno, a former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The committee chairman, Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., opened the session with an expression of concern about trends in Afghanistan. "I believe that we currently risk a strategic failure in Afghanistan and that we must do what it takes to avoid this disastrous outcome," Skelton said in a prepared statement. "We must re-prioritize and shift needed resources from Iraq to Afghanistan. We must once again make Afghanistan the central focus in the war against terrorism — our national security and Afghanistan's future are at stake." ___ On the Net: Defense Department: www.defenselink.milSource: news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080124/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_afghanistan_pakistan_8
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Feb 25, 2008 11:39:20 GMT 4
'Islamic consultation best formula for Pak democracy' Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:47:55 An interview with Liaquat Ali Khan by Ismail Salami, Press TV Liaquat Ali Khan initially trained as a civil engineer. He later switched to law, obtaining a degree from Punjab University, Lahore. In 1976, Khan immigrated to the United States and studied law at New York University School of Law where he received his LL.M. and J.S.D. Khan is a member of the New York Bar. Khan has authored three academic books published in the prestigious series Developments in International Law. Over the years, he has written numerous law review articles on the US Constitution, comparative constitutional law, legal education, human rights, international disputes, and terrorism. His academic writings are used as part of course materials in universities across the world. Khan has devoted much of his academic scholarship to Islamic law and conflicts involving Muslim communities. Khan contributed ground-breaking articles on Islamic jurisprudence. In addition to law articles and academic books, Khan also writes for the popular press in the United States, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent. His legal and foreign affairs commentaries are published worldwide and international media seek his comments on world events. In Spring 2007, Khan was a resident legal scholar with the Organization of Islamic Conference in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He has taught at Washburn University School of Law since 1983. Some of his books include: A Theory of International Terrorism: Understanding Islamic Militancy. (Martinus Nijhoff, 2006). A Theory of Universal Democracy: Beyond the End of History. (Kluwer Law International, 2003). The Extinction of Nation-States: A World Without Borders. Kluwer Law International, 1996. The Legitimacy of a Coup d'Etat. New York University, 1983. Following is the text of the interview Press TV's Ismail Salami has conducted with Liaquat Ali Khan. Q. In the recent elections in Pakistan, most of the people have voted for 'moderate parties' as they say. Is it a good sign for the country? If yes, why? A. The word "moderate parties" in the context of Muslim countries is a code word that means secular, pro-Western parties. In the American political vocabulary, the parties that take the Islamic way of life seriously are not moderate. In 2008 parliamentary elections, Pakistanis have voted primarily for two national parties that have ruled before, PPP and PML-N. Some Islamic parties refused to take part in the elections. Some did but they lost primarily because they were too closely associated with Pervez Musharraf. If the winning parties in Pakistan will fight the American war on terror, they will be welcome as moderate parties. If the new government will say no to "the war on terror" and make an effort to bring peace to the nation, it will come under economic and military pressure to change. Unfortunately, some (not all) US policymakers prefer that Muslim governments fight and kill "extremists and radicals." This is a recipe for internal strife and civil war. Pakistan needs to wake up, as must all Muslim nations, to say NO to the genocidal "war on terror." Consultation, negotiation, conciliation, and arbitration are the Islamic methods of dispute resolution. These are also the methods of international law. These methods are mandatory when disputes are among Muslims. Hopefully, the winning political parties in Pakistan will use these methods to resolve internal disputes. Q. Given the fact that the PPP has won the maximum number of seats and the PML-N nearly close behind, do you think democracy will be established in the troubled country? A. Pakistan is not a unitary state. It consists of four provinces. Each province has a democratic parliament. The 2008 elections, in addition to electing the federal parliament, also elected the four provincial parliaments. Accordingly, PML-N that won in Punjab will establish government in the Punjab, PPP won in Sindh and form the provincial government there. Other parties and coalitions will establish governments in the other two provinces. At the center, PPP and PML-N are likely to establish a coalition government that Pakistanis would need for stability and reconciliation. The worst case scenario will be where PPP, under foreign pressure, would consent to work with Pervez Musharraf. This coalition will anger the lawyers. Furthermore, the judges will remain deposed. The court system will remain dysfunctional. The Supreme Court as presently constituted will have no legitimacy. Q. Recently there has been a lot of pressure on Musharraf to step down with an urge to form a government of national unity. Do you think this will be materialized? A. The pressure on Pervez Musharraf to leave office will only build now that PML-Q, the political party that supported him, has lost very badly in the federal elections. Musharraf now has no source of power. He has no military power because he is longer the Army Chief. He has no political power because his political party has lost elections. He has no constitutional power because he has unlawfully amended the Constitution in numerous ways. Shorn of all legitimacy, it is unclear how Musharraf can continue to be the President of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Even if a government of national unity is installed, it is not critical that Musharraf be part of that government. Q. Is there a chance Musharraf will be impeached by the new parliamentarians? A.It depends on the political will of the parties in the national parliament. They need the support of two-thirds members of both houses, the Parliament and the Senate, to impeach the President. Impeachment is not an easy process. The nation will suffer another trauma. The best course will be for the President to leave office. However, Musharraf might get into trouble even if he quits office. The lawyers would want to try him for treason for he suspended the Constitution without lawful reasons. Q. What do you think is the best for the people of Pakistan at this juncture? A. The best course for the people of Pakistan is to let the democratic process work. The parties that won the federal elections shoulder a great amount of responsibility to steer the country through these hard times. They must be prudent and use the Islamic method of "consultations" to choose the best step forward. They must think independently and not under foreign pressure. The political crisis will continue to simmer, however, if lawyers are not brought on board. The restoration of the judicial system is the key to the stability of the nation. Q. How instrumental can the assassination of Benazir Bhutto be in changing the history of Pakistan? A. Pakistan has sacrificed a lot of leaders in the struggle for democracy. The first Prime Minister was assassinated soon after the creation of Pakistan. Prime Minister Zulifiqar Ali Bhutto was executed on dubious murder charges. The assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is the most recent tragedy. She was a beloved leader of the nation. It is unclear how her death will change the history of Pakistan. For all practical purposes, Pakistan has become a "global entity" where conflicting interests of foreign powers define Pakistan's internal and external policies. Ismail Salami is the author of 'Iran Cradle of Civilization' and numerous articles on Middle East and Asia. He can be reached at salami@salamionline.com. Source: www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=43962§ionid=3510302------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ TBR News February 22, 2008 The Voice of the White House Washington , D.C. , February 20, 2008 : “Another of Bush’s plans gone smash to hell recently. He thought he had Pakistan in the bag. He bought their president Musharraf with huge amounts of money so he would “make war on the terrorists there” who were using Pakistani territory to train fighters for use in Afghanistan . It never was more that a silly farce because the Paki army was terrified of the Taliban and Musharraf and his fascist chums, stole billions and did nothing while the loony Bush and the nuts in the Pentagon PR department bleated about how successful they were. They weren’t and we know it. Now, the people of Pakistan rose up and threw all of them out. The leader won’t go so why doesn’t Bush get the CIA to stop flying people around to be tortured to death and use one of their bloody cargo planes to fly Musharraf and his gold bars to Switzerland as they have done before. Pinochet in Chile and now this joker in Pakistan . Our murderers by proxy. Eventually, the people of Pakistan will drag this sack of dung out of his office and set him on fire in the street. If they do, Bush might take a lesson from it. Cheney is trying to get Bush to send massive troop numbers into Pakistan to, according to the staff memo I read yesterday, “stiffen resistance and aid in attacking” the evil Taliban. This is funny as hell because the U.S. doesn’t have any combat ready troops. They are either dead, terribly injured in rotting vet’s hospitals or hiding in Ireland (7,000 deserters are in Ireland but we don’t talk about that in the controlled press, do we?) We could be invaded by Eskimos and they would take Nashville before the local Boy Scouts drove them off. Way to go, pinhead!” Pakistan : US hopes war on "terror" will continue February 20, 2008 daily times LAHORE : White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said on Tuesday that the United States hoped Pakistan ’s new government would continue to cooperate in the war against terror. According to Geo News, another White House spokesman said the US would like to work cordially with the new government. Meanwhile, State Department spokesman Tom Casey said the US hopes the new government would cooperate with President Pervez Musharraf, adding that the US was not trying to tell anyone what to do. Also, State Department spokeswoman Nicole Thompson said Monday’s elections were “an important step on the path towards an elected civilian democracy that reflects the choices of the Pakistani people”. daily times monitor www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008\story_20-2-2008_pg1_2 Musharraf vows not to resign February 29, 2008 by Declan Walsh in Islamabad and Mark Tran The Guardian President Pervez Musharraf today pledged to complete his five-year term in defiance of the opposition, setting the stage for a confrontation with the incoming government. "We have to move forward in a way that we bring about a stable democratic government to Pakistan," the retired general told the Wall Street Journal, vowing to remain in office until 2012. Musharraf's authority has been severely weakened by the crushing defeat of his Pakistan Muslim League (Q) party in Monday's general election. With all votes counted the party won just 42 of 268 directly elected seats. Opposition leaders Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari are due to begin putting together a coalition government in Islamabad later today. Sharif campaigned on a platform of ousting Musharraf, but Zardari, who leads the Pakistan People's party (PPP) has been more coy, leaving the door open to possible cooperation. Zardari said he would like a small regional rival with ties to Musharraf to join a coalition government. The PPP emerged with the largest number of seats in the national assembly, but lacks a majority. Zardari said the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League (Q) was unwelcome in a coalition, but the PPP wanted its junior partner in the last government, the Muttahida Qaumi (MQM) movement, to join. "I want to make a government along with the MQM," he told a news conference in Islamabad. The US wants the opposition to work with Musharraf. After meeting the president yesterday, senator Joe Biden, an influential Washington politician, said the former general appeared resigned to a ceremonial role. "To me it appears more about respect than power," he said. The US president, George Bush, said he hoped Pakistan would remain committed to working with the US in the "war on terror". "It's now time for the newly elected folks to show up and form their government," Bush said during a news conference in Accra, the capital of Ghana, on his tour of Africa. "The question then is, 'Will they be friends of the United States?' I certainly hope so." The election claimed a number of notable political scalps, including Musharraf confidante Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, rumoured to have left the country within hours of defeat, and backroom power broker Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain. "All the King's men, gone!" proclaimed the headline in the Daily Times as jubilant voters danced in the streets, sang and fired celebratory bursts of gunfire into the air. Analysts were divided over Musharraf's prospects. "It turned out to be a referendum on Musharraf," said Irfan Husain. "I don't give him more than a few months, unless there is pressure from the US." Others said things were less dire for the president. "Does [the situation] imply that he has been left with no option but to step down? Perhaps not — even certainly not — in the immediate future," wrote Zaffar Abbas in today's Dawn newspaper. The focus now is on power-sharing talks between the election's two big winners — the Pakistan People's Party of assasinated opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, which polled the most seats, and Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League (N), which came a close second. Bhutto's widower, Asif Ali Zardari, leads the PPP. Neither party has an outright majority but together could easily form a government. The question is on which terms. Sharif, ousted by Musharraf in a 1999 coup, ran a campaign dominated by one unflinching demand: the removal of "dictator" Musharraf. Now he has his chance. Yesterday ecstatic loyalists chanted, "The lion is coming again!" outside Sharif's Lahore home, where the bullish opposition leader recalled an old Musharraf promise. "He would say 'When people want, I will go.' Now the people have given their verdict," he said, vowing to work out a plan to "say goodbye to dictatorship forever". But Zardari was more guarded, floating the idea of a government of national unity but refusing to rule out cooperation with Musharraf himself. "We will seek support from democratic forces to form the government," he said. However he squelched suggestions he could work with Musharraf's party — the possibility that offers Musharraf the best chance of survival. The complex power game was welcomed by Pakistanis, who had feared a more chaotic outcome. Pre-poll predictions of violence and vote rigging failed to materialise — although there were localised complaints of irregularities, they were not enough to halt the opposition surge. There were other signs that the general's authority is faltering. In Lahore, lawyer Aitzaz Ahsan, who has been under house arrest for over three months, welcomed the media in to his home. The firebrand lawyer, who is also a PPP member, said his phone was mysteriously reconnected on Monday night as the results started to stream in. The next morning jail officials assigned to guard him failed to show up for work. The return of Ahsan heralds another headache for Musharraf. Ahsan vowed to renew the campaign for the release of former chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who has been under house arrest since November 3, and who Musharraf recently described as "the scum of the earth". Musharraf told the Wall Street Journal that the reinstatement of Chaudhry was out of the question. "There is no room for it," he said. "Legally, there's no way this can be done . . . It's not a possibility." The anti-Musharraf results have opened new strains in his relationship with the west. Ahsan said the US and British policies had been an utter failure. "He is the most despised person in the country. Why should the Americans and Brits continue to put pennies in his cap? I don't understand." But even the foreign friends are also starting to notch up the pressure. Before the poll, Senator Biden warned that the US could slash aid — $10bn (£5m) in mostly military aid since 2002 — if the elections were rigged. Yesterday he said the election was "an opportunity to move from a policy focused on a personality to one based on an entire people". The US seems to be priming itself for a post-Musharraf scenario. Over the past month his successor as army chief, General Ashfaq Kiani, has been visited by US military and intelligence officials. Kayani was perceived as a close Musharraf ally when he was appointed last November, but as Musharraf's popularity fell Kayani pulled the army back from the public glare, ordering soldiers to steer clear of politicians and withdrawing senior officers from sinecures in civilian institutions. The election's other major upset was the ignominious defeat of the religious parties that have ruled North-West Frontier and Baluchistan provinces since 2002. In their place came secular Pashtun nationalists and the PPP — a welcome development for western countries hunting Taliban and al-Qaida militants in the area. But in other parts of the country, voters rejected Musharraf for practical reasons, particularly rising food prices and electricity shortages that have afflicted the poor. Whatever the final outcome, Zardari and Sharif have not been elected because of outstanding criminal charges, so neither can become prime minister. Musharraf vows not to resign February 20, 2008 Aljazeera Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president, says he has no plans to resign despite a sweeping election victory by opposition parties. When asked by The Wall Street Journal whether he would resign or retire, Musharraf said: "No, not yet. We have to move forward in a way that we bring about a stable democratic government to Pakistan ." The election result has been seen as a vote against Musharraf's actions as president. Pakistan People's party (PPP), the party of Benazir Bhutto, the assassinated former prime minister, said it would try to form a coalition goverment without the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League-Q. Asif Ali Zardari, the party's co-chairman, told a news conference in Islamabad on Tuesday: "We will form a government of national consensus which will take along every democratic force." The PPP won the most seats in the national assembly in Monday's elections, while the PML-Q, which supports Pervez Musharraf, the president, trailed a distant third. The PPP wants Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister Musharraf overthrew in 1999, to join the coalition along with an ethnic Pashtun party in the North West Frontier Province where fighters operate. Taj Haider, a senior PPP member, said: "The dividing line is whether you were with the dictatorship or whether you were with those forces who were struggling for democracy." Sharif, whose party ran a close second in Monday's poll, has made driving Musharraf from power his mission since returning from exile in Saudi Arabia in November. Mushahid Hussein, secretary general of the PML-Q, told Al Jazeera that his party's election performance was "far below expectations". "But we are democrats," he said. "And we have accepted our defeat with grace, which is a first in Pakistan 's chequered political history. "And we look forward to working with the future government in the parliament as a robust and vibrant opposition." "We have a sizeable number. We are a major player ... We expect to play our rightful role in the opposition, and that is something new and different in Pakistan . "We won't try to destablise the government. We would like to co-operate with the government in promoting a genuine national agenda which serves the interest of Pakistan and its people." Support losses Musharraf blamed his poor election performance on sympathy votes for Bhutto, who was killed during the election campaign, inflation, and a battle in the judiciary last year that led to Musharraf sacking the supreme court. Pakistan vote: At a glance - Pakistan has 81 million registered voters, out of a population of 160 million people. - Voters choose 272 members of the National Assembly, or lower house of parliament, for a five-year term. - Another 60 seats are reserved for women and 10 for religious minorities. - There are 106 parties, 15 of which were represented in the last parliament. - More than 60,000 polling stations were set up across the country. - Key issues include restoration of a full civilian government, reinstatement of sacked judges, rising militancy, economy and high unemployment. But he said the polls were fair. "We have held free, fair, transparent and peaceful elections. This was my promise, which has been delivered," he said. "How it is different is that there's a likely change of government. There will be a coalition government that will be coming in." Despite mounting calls for him to step down, he has refused to leave office, saying he will work with whoever is named prime minister. "I would like to function with any party and any coalition because that is in the interest of Pakistan ," Musharraf said. "We have to go for conciliatory politics and harmonious interaction within the government, between various parties and between the prime minister and the government. I will strive towards that end. On the other side, I can't say." "I'm not heading a political party. Let the political parties meet with each other and form a coalition. If any one thinks I can facilitate in a positive way for Pakistan I would like to do it." english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/3DFA6871-9C23-4D30-9DCA-9A53257041B5.htm Source: www.tbrnews.org/Archives/a2817.htm
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Mar 28, 2008 6:11:45 GMT 4
Let us envision a Pakistan free from interfering forces and a new government formed out of the highest ideals...MichellePakistan's new leaders tell US: We are no longer your killing field · Visiting envoys earn cold reception from coalition · PM wants new approach to fight Islamic extremismDeclan Walsh in Islamabad The Guardian, Thursday March 27 2008 The Bush administration is scrambling to engage with Pakistan's new rulers as power flows from its strong ally, President Pervez Musharraf, to a powerful civilian government buoyed by anti-American sentiment. Top diplomats John Negroponte and Richard Boucher travelled to a mountain fortress near the Afghan border yesterday as part of a hastily announced visit that has received a tepid reception. On Tuesday, senior coalition partner Nawaz Sharif gave the visiting Americans a public scolding for using Pakistan as a "killing field" and relying too much on Musharraf. Yesterday the new prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, said he warned President George Bush in a phone conversation that he would prioritise talking as well as shooting in the battle against Islamist extremism. "He said that a comprehensive approach is required in this regard, specially combining a political approach with development," a statement said. But Gilani also reassured Bush that Pakistan would "continue to fight against terrorism", it said. Since 2001 American officials have treasured their close relationship with Musharraf because he offered a "one-stop shop" for cooperation in hunting al-Qaida fugitives hiding in Pakistan. But since the crushing electoral defeat of Musharraf's party last month, and talk that the new parliament may hobble the president's powers, that equation has changed. Now the US finds itself dealing with politicians it previously spurned. The body language between Negroponte and Sharif during their meeting on Tuesday spoke volumes: the Pakistani greeted the American with a starched handshake, and sat at a distance . In blunt remarks afterwards, Sharif said he told Negroponte that Pakistan was no longer a one-man show. "Since 9/11, all decisions were taken by one man," he said. "Now we have a sovereign parliament and everything will be debated in the parliament." It was "unacceptable that while giving peace to the world we make our own country a killing field," Sharif said, echoing widespread public anger at US-funded military operations in the tribal belt. "If America wants to see itself clean of terrorism, we also want our villages and towns not to be bombed," he said. US officials have long paid tribute to the virtues of democracy in Pakistan. But, as happened in the Palestinian Authority after the 2006 Hamas victory, policymakers are racing to catch up with the consequences of a result that challenges American priorities. The US has long been suspicious of Sharif, whom it views as sympathetic to religious parties. Unlike Benazir Bhutto, whose return from exile was negotiated through the US, Sharif came under the protection of Saudi Arabia. But now Sharif's party, which performed well in the poll, is an integral part of the new government. Yesterday Negroponte and Boucher travelled to the Khyber Pass in North-West Frontier Province, the centre of a growing insurgency. They met with the commander of the Frontier Corps, a poorly equipped paramilitary force that the US has offered to upgrade. The US has earmarked $750m (£324m) for a five-year development programme in tribal areas. At least 22 military instructors are due to start training the corps this year. The timing of the American visit - before the new cabinet is announced - has offended Pakistanis. "It flies in the face of normal protocol at a time when public opinion is rife that they are making a last ditch effort to save Musharraf," said Talat Hussain, a prominent journalist. It is unclear how Pakistan's foreign policy will be formulated in future. Musharraf's power may have been cut but the strong army is lurking in the shadows, and the coalition is wrangling over cabinet posts, including that of foreign minister. Gilani must manage other tensions, particularly over whether to reinstate Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the deposed chief justice who was freed from house arrest on Monday. Chaudhry has become a folk hero but is viewed with suspicion by Gilani's Pakistan People's party. Source:www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/27/pakistan.usa
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Apr 14, 2008 17:59:28 GMT 4
Monday 14th April, 2008 Bush speaks on the possibility of another 9/11 Big News Network.com Sunday 13th April, 2008 US President George Bush has said he believes another 9/11 attack on the United Sates should be considered a strong possibility and warned that such an attack could originate from Pakistan.In an interview with America’s ABC TV, Mr Bush said: "If another September 11 style attack is being planned, it probably is being plotted in Pakistan, and not Afghanistan."Bush said if the terrorists were planning such attacks, they would be found out. During the interview he also said that Washington had no intention of attacking Iran, but added that it was the responsibility of the US to convince the world of Iran's capacity to enrich its uranium capacities for a potentially threatening nuclear weapons program. It was, therefore, in the interest of Washington to pressurise the Iranians to prevent them from enriching their uranium haul. He said the US was continually gaining knowledge about Iran's activities in Iraq. Bush said the United States would bring Iran to justice if it continued to try to use agents or surrogates to infiltrate Iraq and harm US troops and Iraqi citizens. Asked to clarify "bring to justice," Bush replied: "It means capture or kill, is what that means."Source:feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=348168
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Apr 25, 2008 15:33:23 GMT 4
U.S. angry as Pakistan seeks peace deal with IslamistsSaeed Shah | McClatchy Newspapers last updated: April 23, 2008 08:42:40 PM ISLAMABAD — Pakistan's new government is negotiating a peace deal with militants in the Taliban-controlled Waziristan region, the rugged mountainous area that's thought to be Osama bin Laden's refuge. The move reflects the changing approach of America's longtime ally in the war on terror, and news of the talks set off alarm bells in Washington Wednesday."We are concerned about it, and what we encourage them to do is to continue to fight against the terrorists and to not disrupt any security or military operations that are ongoing in order to help prevent a safe haven for terrorists there," said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino. "We have been concerned about these types of approaches because we don't think that they work."However, details emerged Wednesday of talks under way between the Pakistani government and leaders of the dominant Mehsud tribe in South Waziristan on an agreement in which the Pakistani army would pull out of the area and the government would release some militants from custody. A State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said that U.S. military commanders with troops on the Afghan border are especially upset by the negotiations, fearing that a truce would allow Islamic militants to step up attacks on U.S.-led NATO and Afghan government troops in Afghanistan.The military "is really ticked off," said the State Department official, who added that U.S. entreaties to the Pakistani military to keep the heat on Islamic extremists "seems to be falling on deaf ears."South Waziristan is the most volatile part of Pakistan's autonomous tribal belt, known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), which runs along the country's border with Afghanistan. U.S. officials believe that the FATA, and South Waziristan in particular, are a base for the Taliban and al Qaida. The Bush administration was critical of a previous peace accord in South Waziristan, which was forged three years ago, seeing it as giving an opportunity for the militants to regroup. That accord, and a similar one in North Waziristan in 2006, were followed by increased attacks against NATO forces in Afghanistan.Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, the chief spokesman of the Pakistan army, said that the military had briefed the incoming government on the situation in South Waziristan as "the No. 1" issue. "It is the government that has carried out the negotiations with the tribals," Abbas said. "The terms are completely up to the tribal elders and the government." Pakistan's army has as many as 30,000 troops in South Waziristan, Abbas said. Major hostilities broke out between the army and militants there in late January, but an uneasy unofficial cease-fire has been observed since February. The Pakistani government has made no announcement about the peace deal, but according to Pakistani officials, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject, this agreement will be with tribal leaders, not with the militants.However, Baitullah Mehsud, the Islamist warlord based in South Waziristan who leads Pakistan's version of the Taliban and is believed to be close to al Qaida, indicated that his Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan movement is a party to the agreement. Mehsud signed the 2005 agreement but broke it almost immediately. "There is significant positive development; we have accepted most of each other's demands. In next few days, we hope that a positive outcome is achieved," said Maulvi Omar, the spokesman of Tehreek-i-Taliban. Baitullah Mehsud's men were distributing leaflets to followers that ordered them to halt attacks on security forces and government installations, Pakistani media reported. Those failing to obey would be punished, the pamphlets warned. Ominously for the United States and NATO, Maulvi Omar said the movement couldn't guarantee an end to infiltration into neighboring Afghanistan until all foreign troops were pulled out. Mehmood Shah, formerly the top bureaucrat administering FATA, said the new peace deal was flawed, as it appeared to be with the leaders of the Mehsud tribe, who were scared of Baitullah Mehsud and would be unable or unwilling to enforce its terms. "The tribes themselves are not in any position themselves to take action against Baitullah Mehsud or (affiliated) groups," said Shah. "It is meaningless. The tribes people have to be enabled first so they can control these groups." Baitullah Mehsud controls thousands of heavily armed followers and is blamed for a vicious campaign of suicide bombings in Pakistan, including the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. According to a report in Dawn, a Pakistani newspaper, a 15-point draft agreement has been reached with Mehsud elders. Under the agreement, the tribe would ensure that Pakistani security forces wouldn't be attacked in South Waziristan, would end all terrorist activity and would expel all foreign combatants from the territory. In addition, Mehsud tribesmen imprisoned for alleged terrorist activity would be exchanged for Pakistani security personnel who have been taken hostage. Afrasiab Khattak, a politician with the ruling coalition who was involved in forging the deal, said that tribal pressure would pull people into the peace process. Earlier this week, the State Department was critical of a decision by the Pakistani government to free militant leader Sufi Muhammed from prison, in a separate peace initiative. But the news on South Waziristan got a cautiously positive response from the State Department."It's the outcome that matters, You have to talk to people," said Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher, seemingly at odds with the White House. "The Pakistani government is engaged in discussion designed to stop violence. It's got to be done in a way that produces results, that reduces violence."(Shah is a special correspondent for McClatchy.)
McClatchy Newspapers 2008Source: www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/34748.html
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