How ODA 574 Installed Karzai, And Afghan Democracy

Afghan democracy is the work of US army’s special forces unit, led by Major Jason Amerine.  This is a fake, imposed democracy.  It will not last.

The Afghan election is not about George Washington, Cromwell or the French Revolution.  It is more about Major Jason Amerine and his battle-hardened covert operations boys who introduced Hamid Karzai to the world, along with fake, warlord-backed, drug-money-financed Afghan democracy that will never work.

For the people in Afghanistan and Pakistan, whose historical emperors ruled a large swath of Central and South Asia, they would never accept a ruler installed by an occupation force.  The setup in Kabul is there as long as the Americans are in Kabul with the coalition of the unwilling, NATO.  The only other country that is keen to sustain the Afghan mess is India, for reasons that have to do with Pakistan than anything else.

Hamid Karzai was brought to power seven years ago by US special forces unit ODA 574.

His rival, Abdullah Abdullah, is worse.  He was a smalltime PR person working for the northern alliance force, a proxy militia created by the Indians and Iranians, with Russian backing.

The Afghan election is not about George Washington, Cromwell or the French Revolution.  It is more about Major Jason Amerine and his battle-hardened covert operations boys who introduced Hamid Karzai to the world, along with fake, warlord-backed, drug-money-financed Afghan democracy that will never work. For the people in Afghanistan and Pakistan, whose historical emperors ruled a large swath of Central and South Asia, they would never accept a ruler installed by an occupation force.  The setup in Kabul is there as long as the Americans are in Kabul with the coalition of the unwilling, NATO.  The only other country that is keen to sustain the Afghan mess is India, for reasons that have to do with Pakistan than anything else. Hamid Karzai was brought to power seven years ago by US special forces unit ODA 574.   His rival, Abdullah Abdullah, is worse.  He was a smalltime PR person working for the northern alliance force, a proxy militia created by the Indians and Iranians, with Russian backing.

Maj. Amerine with Karzai and Bush.  He can tell you Karzai was installed by the US, underlining the fact that Afghanistan is a US colony and not a nation exercising its free will

Remember the breaking news on CNN and BBC on Nov. 2, 2001 when the two Am-Brit channels aired a planted news story about a heroic Hamid Karzai entering Afghanistan with fighters from his tribe to liberate Kabul from Taliban government?

It was a drama orchestrated to legitimize the US- and UK-installed pawn in Kabul. You can see here a private picture taken by someone from ODA 574.  It shows what Karzai was actually doing on the ground about the same time that the American and British media was glorifying Karzai’s solo attempt at ‘liberating’ Afghanistan. On September 11, 2001, US Army’s lead special forces unit, ODA 574, was in Kazakhstan reportedly training the Kazakh army.  Three days later, its members were secretly entering Afghanistan, one month before the formal launch of the American-British invasion of Afghanistan.  ODA 574 entered Afghan territory even before the United Nations granted Washington the right to wage war in response to 9/11.

ODA 574 does not operate as part of the US military on the ground.  Its job is to infiltrate other countries, carry out sabotage and generally help break the target from the inside.  This includes assassinating political or religious leaders, destroying power plants, or sparking ethnic or sectarian clashes.  In a way, what the unit was doing in this picture above was a dry run for all the mess introduced to the region in the following years, in Pakistan, in Iran, and in China’s Xinjiang.  Pakistanis are almost convinced that the miraculous and sudden rise of the so-called Pakistani Taliban to spread terror inside Pakistan had everything to do with support from covert elements inside Afghanistan, possibly a setup similar to ODA 574.

There is little doubt also that US-controlled Afghanistan is being used by both Americans and Indians to stir trouble in China’s Xinjiang. Russia and Iran are paying the price for helping the Americans use their assets, the Northern Alliance, to occupy Afghanistan.  In Russia, the fronts in Ingushetia and Chechnya have suddenly warmed up recently with mysterious attacks on vital installations.  Payback time, Putin. According to information available in the public domain, members of ODA 574 are equipped with training for unconventional warfare, special communications systems and backed by combat controllers. The unit helped glorify Hamid Karzai, who until then was nothing more than a fixer hired by American oil interests to court the Taliban government in Kabul.  Karzai worked for Zalmay Khalilzad, who worked for people close to Dick Cheney and the Bush family, who were in bed with oil giants.

Washington used the Indian-Iranian-Russian backed Northern Alliance against Kabul. But after the occupation, Washington wanted to see its own puppet in power.  Karzai was ‘lionized’ so that he could stand up to the Northern Alliance in the negotiations to form a post-Taliban government.  Needless to say, the Am-Brit media pumped so much hot air into Karzai’s image that everyone else had to concede the presidency to America’s nominee. This is, of course, my version of the story.  The version of the US army is slightly different.  The US military does not deny that ODA 574 was there on the ground in Afghanistan helping Karzai.  The US military simply constructs a myth around the help extended by ODA 574 to Afghan ‘freedom fighters’ led by Hamid Karzai to topple an oppressive regime in Kabul.  The American version also defines ODA 574’s mission as that to bolster democracy in pursuance of the ideals of America’s founding fathers.  In short, the usual American foreign policy doublespeak.

The worst part of this story is that the American people, who are a fine people, are spoon-fed government planted lies 24/7 through CNN and Fox News.  A majority of the Americans don’t know what their government and their military have done to Afghanistan, empowering thugs and drug pushers and using the occupied nation to destabilize neighboring countries. If Afghanistan were America’s war of independence, the government in Kabul today would be the equivalent of General George Howe of Britain defeating George Washington and appointing a British puppet as chief executive in White House.

Conclusion: The elections in Afghanistan were a success.  A triumph for freedom.  Ahem.

Anyone Still Interested In Kidnapping Dr. AQ Khan?

Security officials in Pakistan will have to balance Dr. Khan’s legitimate need to feel he continues to be a revered Pakistani hero with Pakistan’s security requirements and needs.  This is a tough balancing act considering that Dr. Khan’s original incarceration and the subsequent demonization was contrary to Pakistani interest.

The credit for the two best-known cases of smuggling out nuclear scientists goes to Israel’s Mossad and Pakistan’s ISI.  Israel kidnapped a renegade Israeli nuclear scientist.  Pakistan helped one return home from Europe with the technology to build the bomb.

Both scientists were driven by noble impulses.  The Israeli scientist, Mordechai Vanunu, wanted to expose his government’s fevered push to produce nuclear weapons in a region that had none.  The Pakistani scientist wanted to help his small country stand up to a nuclear-armed bully, India.

This is why Dr. A. Q. Khan, who has been much demonized by the Am-Brit media, is a hero to 180 million Pakistanis.

But a question begs itself: demonized for what?

Although former President Musharraf did a commendable job at shielding Dr. Khan from direct American access, the very act of forcing Dr. Khan to confess to something that is not a crime under any law was wrong.

Pakistan is not signatory to Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.  Islamabad could have simply told Washington and London to take a hike when both accused it of transferring technology to Iran and North Korea.

In fact, there was room for a deal:  Ensure Pakistan’s legitimate regional security requirements, including a credible nuclear deterrent in the face of Indian posturing, in exchange for avoiding any future Pakistani nuclear trade with North Korea.

By incarcerating Dr. Khan, Musharraf’s Pakistan accepted undue pressure.  We will have to pay for a long time, especially in bad reputation, for showing weakness when we should not have.

But since Pakistan did accept the ‘crime’, several international parties can make a case now for pursuing Dr. Khan if he is set free from the security detail provided to him.  The Americans have been twisting Pakistani arm for some time demanding US officers be allowed to interrogate Dr. Khan.

Washington has direct interest in nuclear technology transfer to Iran and North Korea.  But America has also been silently worried about the Pakistani nuclear program.  In 1978, when there was no threat of extremists overtaking Pakistani nukes, CIA used the US consulate in Karachi to recruit 12 Pakistani nuclear scientists and technicians.  The CIA ring was assigned the task of sabotaging several nuclear sites to scuttle the nascent Pakistani nuclear program and make it look like a series of unfortunate accidents by an inexperienced nuclear power.

The Israelis are also quite active in the region: In India where military and intelligence cooperation is at a peak; and in Afghanistan, which is one of the countries Israeli intelligence service is using to encircle and penetrate Iran.

In February, London’s Daily Telegraph ran a report quoting unnamed ‘western intelligence sources’ that said Israel was quietly assassinating Iranian nuclear experts.  As proof, the newspaper said Mossad was behind the mysterious murder of Ardeshire Hassanpor, the top Iranian nuclear scientist at the uranium plant in Isfahan.

Why would anyone still be interested in laying their hands on Dr. A. Q. Khan, who has had no operational access to Pakistani strategic sites for at least a decade now?

Considering Pakistan’s crippled security environment, exposed thanks to a heavy US overt and covert presence in the region, Dr. Khan faces a real threat of being kidnapped.  Washington’s spy network has been a failure so far in assessing the exact location of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.  The Americans have also failed, despite several attempts, to gain access to the ‘triggers’.  Under duress, like a Guantanamo-style interrogation, Dr. Khan can provide clues that could lead to understanding where and how Pakistan is safeguarding its nuclear capability.

Security officials in Pakistan will have to balance Dr. Khan’s legitimate need to feel he continues to be a revered Pakistani hero with Pakistan’s security requirements and needs.  This is a tough balancing act considering that Dr. Khan’s original incarceration and the subsequent demonization was contrary to Pakistani interest.

In July 2008, when a justifiably angry Dr. Khan gave a series of press interviews throwing out juicy details about Pakistan’s nuclear history, I authored a report assessing threats to the well being of Dr. Khan should he decide to completely dispose off of the security detail provided to him.

Here are relevant excerpts:

The credit for the two best-known cases of smuggling out nuclear scientists goes to Israel’s Mossad and Pakistan’s ISI.  Israel kidnapped a renegade Israeli nuclear scientist.  Pakistan helped one return home from Europe with the technology to build the bomb.  Both scientists were driven by noble impulses.  The Israeli scientist, Mordechai Vanunu, wanted to expose his government’s fevered push to produce nuclear weapons in a region that had none.  The Pakistani scientist wanted to help his small country stand up to a nuclear-armed bully, India.

This is why Dr. A. Q. Khan, who has been much demonized by the Am-Brit media, is a hero to 180 million Pakistanis.

But a question begs itself: demonized for what? Although former President Musharraf did a commendable job at shielding Dr. Khan from direct American access, the very act of forcing Dr. Khan to confess to something that is not a crime under any law was wrong. Pakistan is not signatory to Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.  Islamabad could have simply told Washington and London to take a hike when both accused it of transferring technology to Iran and North Korea.

In fact, there was room for a deal:  Ensure Pakistan’s legitimate regional security requirements, including a credible nuclear deterrent in the face of Indian posturing, in exchange for avoiding any future Pakistani nuclear trade with North Korea.  By incarcerating Dr. Khan, Musharraf’s Pakistan accepted undue pressure.  We will have to pay for a long time, especially in bad reputation, for showing weakness when we should not have. But since Pakistan did accept the ‘crime’, several international parties can make a case now for pursuing Dr. Khan if he is set free from the security detail provided to him.  The Americans have been twisting Pakistani arm for some time demanding US officers be allowed to interrogate Dr. Khan.

Washington has direct interest in nuclear technology transfer to Iran and North Korea.  But America has also been silently worried about the Pakistani nuclear program.  In 1978, when there was no threat of extremists overtaking Pakistani nukes, CIA used the US consulate in Karachi to recruit 12 Pakistani nuclear scientists and technicians.  The CIA ring was assigned the task of sabotaging several nuclear sites to scuttle the nascent Pakistani nuclear program and make it look like a series of unfortunate accidents by an inexperienced nuclear power. The Israelis are also quite active in the region: In India where military and intelligence cooperation is at a peak; and in Afghanistan, which is one of the countries Israeli intelligence service is using to encircle and penetrate Iran.

In February, London’s Daily Telegraph ran a report quoting unnamed ‘western intelligence sources’ that said Israel was quietly assassinating Iranian nuclear experts.  As proof, the newspaper said Mossad was behind the mysterious murder of Ardeshire Hassanpor, the top Iranian nuclear scientist at the uranium plant in Isfahan. Why would anyone still be interested in laying their hands on Dr. A. Q. Khan, who has had no operational access to Pakistani strategic sites for at least a decade now?

Considering Pakistan’s crippled security environment, exposed thanks to a heavy US overt and covert presence in the region, Dr. Khan faces a real threat of being kidnapped.  Washington’s spy network has been a failure so far in assessing the exact location of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.  The Americans have also failed, despite several attempts, to gain access to the ‘triggers’.  Under duress, like a Guantanamo-style interrogation, Dr. Khan can provide clues that could lead to understanding where and how Pakistan is safeguarding its nuclear capability.

Security officials in Pakistan will have to balance Dr. Khan’s legitimate need to feel he continues to be a revered Pakistani hero with Pakistan’s security requirements and needs.  This is a tough balancing act considering that Dr. Khan’s original incarceration and the subsequent demonization was contrary to Pakistani interest.

In July 2008, when a justifiably angry Dr. Khan gave a series of press interviews throwing out juicy details about Pakistan’s nuclear history, I authored a report assessing threats to the well being of Dr. Khan should he decide to completely dispose off of the security detail provided to him.

Here are relevant excerpts:

Israeli-American Operation To Kidnap A. Q. Khan

The credit for two best known cases of smuggling a nuclear scientist out from another country goes to Israel’s Mossad and Pakistan’s ISI. Pakistanis understand the game that targets them today. Dr. A. Q. Khan, Pakistan’s notorious nuclear scientist, is under threat of being kidnapped and bundled out of the country in a joint Israeli-American operation that could take the lid off Pakistan’s massive nuclear and strategic arsenal.

Pakistani security officials went on red alert in the last week of June 2008 after receiving information that Israel’s Mossad, possibly in a joint operation with some elements from CIA, is planning to kidnap Dr. Khan, who lives in a house in an Islamabad suburb, and take him out of the country. The officials are tightlipped about the source of the alert.

This possibility is literally Pakistan’s worst nuclear nightmare. All Pakistani scientists, technicians and other special staffers, retired and serving, working on the strategic weapons programs, follow security procedures to avert this possibility. Dr. Khan is the only retired senior scientist who is currently trying to break out of these procedures, creating a risk both for himself and for Pakistan. Islamabad has done a lot to protect him from foreign hands. Dr. Khan no longer holds official access to Pakistan’s strategic facilities but is considered to be a treasure trove of information on Pakistan’s missile and strategic weapons, especially the two areas that bear his fingerprints: uranium enrichment technology and the development of Pakistan’s long range, nuclear capable Ghauri missile series.

The threat to Dr. Khan is part of a larger dilemma facing Islamabad these days regarding how to deal with the retired scientist. The government wants to relax his security detail assigned to him since his 2004 confession to running a clandestine proliferation network and the subsequent presidential pardon. The government wants to do this in order to calm the Pakistani public opinion that continues to see Dr. Khan as a mistreated national hero. But the other side of the coin is the fact that Dr. Khan is privy to critical and classified information. There is no known threat to his life but he faces a real possibility of being kidnapped and shipped out of Pakistan to be debriefed by foreign interrogators. One Pakistani official puts this dilemma facing the Pakistani government this way, ‘How can we take a chance with this kind of a personality?’

Making matters worse is Dr. Khan himself, who has intensified his campaign of blackmailing the government into withdrawing his security detail and set him free of any security. Pakistani officials say Dr. Khan is a free man but that assigning him a security detail is based on threat assessments done by professionals. [ … ]

Pakistan has firmly told everyone that Dr. Khan’s case is ‘closed.’ But the worrying aspect is that with a strongly pro-American PPP government in Islamabad, whose ambassador in Washington is keen to promote U.S. views and whose party cochairman, Mr. Asif Zardari, has used his recent international tour to confirm the presence of terrorist camps inside Pakistan, there is no towering politician or statesman left in the Pakistani capital who can come forward now and boldly defend the Pakistani position. Alarmingly, Dr. Khan has moved the Pakistani Supreme Court to force the government to remove all security detail assigned to him. This obviously crosses a red line. That is why Lt. Gen. Khalid Kidwai, the director of the Strategic Plans Division, which oversees the strategic weapons programs, came out on Saturday in Islamabad to say that Pakistan will protect its interest at any cost.

“There are international threats … [Dr. Khan] is being simplistic in his approach,” Gen. Kidwai told a group of Pakistani journalists during a special briefing over the weekend in Islamabad. Although the days of the Cold War, with their intelligence intrigues, are behind us, the history of nuclear espionage and the stories of the kidnappings and mysterious disappearances of nuclear scientists are too serious and too fresh to be ignored. Early last year, an Iranian scientist, Ardeshire Hassanpour, mysteriously died in Isfahan, Iran. He was connected to the Natanz nuclear facility which is under international spotlight. Reports suggested he was either killed by the Israeli Mossad or was eliminated by the Iranian government after he was found communicating with either American or Israeli agents. In either situation, this is a fresh and clear case that Pakistan’s immediate region is abuzz with covert activity targeting nuclear scientists and installations.

Interestingly, the credit for two of the best known cases of kidnapping a nuclear scientist and taking him to another country goes to Israel’s Mossad and Pakistan’s ISI. The Pakistani intelligence agency smuggled Dr. A. Q. Khan out from Europe to Pakistan, not to mention that it ran a clandestine operation for the purchase of prohibited equipment and recruitment of nuclear experts and technicians. So, it is safe to say that officials in Islamabad know what they are dealing with. And thus the threat perception [the chances of an A.Q. Khan kidnap] is not exaggerated.

On Sept. 30, 1986, Mossad drugged and smuggled out the rogue Israeli nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu while he was en route in a plane from London to Rome. Vanunu was a disgruntled former employee of the Israeli nuclear program. In revenge, he handed over pictures and sensitive information to a British newspaper. For those who think the Pakistani government is not fair to Dr. Khan, they should see what the Israeli government did to Vanunu.

According to a U.S. Web report, ‘Mordechai Vanunu spent 18 years in prison, including more than 11 years in solitary confinement.  Vanunu was released from prison in 2004, subject to a broad array of restrictions on his speech and movement.  Since then he has been briefly arrested several times for multiple violations of those restrictions, including giving various interviews to foreign journalists and attempting to leave Israel.  In July 2007, Vanunu was sentenced to a further six months’ imprisonment for speaking to foreigners and for traveling to Bethlehem.’

In comparison, Dr. Khan is not in detention. He is at his home with his family. He carries a cell phone, along with his family members. Recently, he has been allowed to take meals at restaurants, with some restrictions pertaining to timings in view of Dr. Khan’s security. The Pakistani authorities have been so generous with Dr. Khan that recently he has been free to give telephone and written interviews without any problem, which indicates that his telephone calls and written exchanges are not monitored or censored.

At no point did any Pakistani official misbehave with Dr. Khan. The reason for this generosity is that Dr. Khan might have wronged by getting involved in the proliferation business and self-enrichment, but he remains a man who served his nation well. Lt. Gen. Kidwai of the Strategic Plans Division (SPD) and Gen. Ihsan-ul-Haq, the former head of the ISI, who questioned Dr. Khan in ten different ‘sittings’ back in 2004 always addressed Dr. Khan as ‘sir’ as a sign of respect.

The evidence of wrongdoing against the prominent scientist was so strong and damning that Dr. Khan changed his testimony from an initial denial to stopping at one point to say, ‘Enough is enough. Please ask the President to pardon me.’ Gen. Kidwai and the ISI chief conveyed to President Musharraf that Dr. Khan wanted to apologize and seek a pardon. ‘This is not personal,’ President Musharraf reportedly said, ‘He should apologize to the nation.’

This is where the idea for the famous television apology came up. The National Command Authority, the main federal agency in charge of the strategic assets and the parent organization of SPD, prepared an initial draft and handed a copy to Dr. Khan for his input. The process of finalizing the draft apology took at least three to four days as the draft of the apology letter ran back and forth between the officials and Dr. Khan, who made corrections to the draft with his own pen. This draft copy is available with the officials and contradicts Dr. Khan’s recent complaint that ‘a letter of apology was thrust in his hands at the President’s office and he was asked to read it on television.’ Now Islamabad is considering presenting the evidence against Dr. Khan before a limited group of neutral Pakistanis. The evidence cannot be made public due to the sensitivity of the information. But if Dr. Khan manages to convince the Pakistani court that he needs to be freed of all security around him, then the government will come forward with the evidence before a group of prominent Pakistanis in a closed door exercise. The purpose is to prove that Dr. Khan is not as innocent as he says he is, and, second, to ensure he retains the security detail provided to him in order to protect him from possible threats, including the reports of an Israeli-style kidnapping. Pakistani authorities have a legal document that Dr. Khan approved. The document indicates that the presidential pardon was conditional on Dr. Khan not jeopardizing national secrets and provided that no new information emerges on his proliferation activities beyond what he has already confessed.

As for the latest report on a possible plan to kidnap Dr. Khan and take him outside Pakistan, it is not clear where the information came from. Officials are tightlipped. Islamabad closely monitors Indian activities in the region and there is evidence that Indian intelligence operatives in the past have tried to volunteer information on Pakistani nuclear sites to Israel and to certain Pakistan-averse lobbies in the United States. But Pakistan’s nuclear and strategic weapons programs remain on a strong footing. The image of instability is the result of a political failure on the part of the political class in the country. The military resolve remains intact. In fact, voices are rising now that say that Pakistan should not be apologetic about its past cooperation with North Korea. Islamabad is not signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and its cooperation with North Korea was within the parameters of Pakistan’s own legitimate security and defense considerations and did not break any international law.

Any past and future Pakistani cooperation with the United States or the IAEA remains confined to two red lines set by Islamabad: One, no one can question Pakistan about the origins of its nuclear and strategic weapons programs, and, Two, Pakistan will not discuss at any level its nuclear cooperation with friends and allies. Iran and North Korea are the only exception because the two nations are already involved in multilateral talks about their programs.

Source: Ahmed Quraishi

Sneaking US Occupation Of Islamabad

Pakistan was reported to have expelled the head of an American NGO providing cover to Blackwater operations on Pakistani soil.  Now this deported American, Crag Davis, is back in Pakistan.  And he is not alone.  Close to 2,000 Hummers have arrived at a Pakistani port that are not destined for Afghanistan.  The world’s biggest US embassy is under construction in Islamabad.  As if this is not enough, the US embassy has hired a huge number of houses across the Pakistani capital to serve as unofficial local franchises.  Welcome to the silent American occupation of Pakistan, with the blessing of the elected Pakistani politicians and a silent Pakistani military. 

Before the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was given orders to the contrary, press reports of August 6 show that its spokesman, Mr. Basit, on August 5, at the Karachi Press Club, had already given out the fact of the 1,000 US Marines coming to Pakistan for the protection of the new, imperial US embassy in Islamabad .Now we are seeing houses being barricaded for US personnel all across the capital and we know of the 300 plus ‘military trainers’ already ensconced in Tarbela. In addition we have the notorious Blackwater (now hiding under a new label, Xe Worldwide) and the rather obvious CIA front-company, Creative Associates International, Inc. (CAII), operating not only in Peshawar but now in Islamabad also it transpires – and a recent reflection of this was the sealing off of the road in Super Market [a stone throw away from the houses of senior Pakistani officials] last week right in front of a school! 

Whatever the US embassy gives out or the terrified Pakistani leadership echoes, the reality is that there is a questionable and increasingly threatening US armed presence in Pakistan and this may be augmented soon by an ISAF/NATO presence.  Incidentally, to add to the suspicions of the US presence, reports are coming in of around 3,000 Hummer vehicles, fully loaded, awaiting transportation from Port Qasim. Will some of these go to the Pentagon’s assassination squads, who may take up residence in some of the barricaded Islamabad houses and with whom the present US commander in Afghanistan was directly associated? Ordinary officials at Pakistani airports have also been muttering their concerns over chartered flights flying in Americans whose entry is not recorded – even the flight crews are not checked for visas and so there is now no record-keeping of exactly how many Americans are coming into or going out of Pakistan.  Incidentally the CAII’s Craig Davis who was deported has now returned to Peshawar! And let us not be fooled by the cry that numbers reflect friendship since we know what numbers meant to Soviet satellites. 

Now another threat, in the making for some time, is becoming more overt.  Pakistan’s precious and fertile agricultural land is up for grabs to the highest foreign bidder.  Pakistan is not alone in being targeted thus by rich countries with little or no food resources.  The UN has already condemned this purchase of agricultural land as a form of neo-colonialism.  Over the past five years in a hardly-noticed wave of investment, rich agricultural land and forests in poor countries are being snapped up by buyers from cash-rich countries.  Leading this grab of poor country resources are the rapidly industrializing states and the oil-rich countries who have, between 2006-2009, either directly through governments or through sovereign wealth funds and companies, already grabbed or are in the process of grabbing between 37 to 49 million acres of developing countries’ farmland (a July 2009 report by Robert Schubert of Food and Water Watch).

 Wealthy countries like Japan and South Korea are acquiring farmlands abroad for food security while oil-rich countries are seeking cheap water and cultivated crops to be shipped home. The land buyers from the oil-rich arid countries are seeking water as much as land because by buying or leasing land with sufficient water, they can divert their own domestic irrigation water to municipal water supplies. The foreign land purchases destabilize food security since land given to foreign investors cannot be used to produce food for local communities – the foreign investors’ intent being to take the food back to their own food-scarce countries. Many of the land purchases comprise tens of thousands of acres which are then turned into single-crop farms – and these dwarf the small-scale farms common in the developing world, where nearly nine out of ten farms (85 per cent) are less than five acres. Such land grabs have now been recognised as harming the local communities by dislodging smallholder farmers, aggravating rural poverty and food insecurity. With Gulf countries importing 60 per cent of their food on average, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are leading the investments into Asia and Africa to secure supplies of cereals, meat and vegetables. The rise in demand for food imports for the GCC comes at a time when exportable agricultural surplus worldwide has declined. How does all this impact Pakistan? Pakistan has rich agricultural land and adequate water although the latter’s distribution has been subject to political machinations. There has also been a seemingly deliberate effort by successive ruling elites to undermine the country’s agricultural potential and nowhere is this more brazenly evident than at present with power outages preventing crucial water supply through tubewells; and many rich lands being converted into housing colonies! Then we have had artificially created sugar and wheat shortages – ‘artificial’ because for the last few years our wheat and sugarcane crops have been bountiful. As for the wonderful local fruit, that is also being diverted to feed external populations through exports that are not only depriving the locals of their land’s bounty but also raising local prices so only the rich elite can consume what is left. Now it has come out that we are selling land to the Gulf states, thereby undermining our local agriculture further.  Abraaj Capital and other UAE entities have acquired 800,000 acres of farmland in Pakistan (we have learnt no lessons from the sale of the KESC and the PTCL).  Qatar Livestock is investing $1 billion in corporate farms in Pakistan. But all this produce will be taken out, so the argument that this foreign investment will bring in new technologies into our agricultural sector does not hold. In any case, one does not have to sell one’s land to foreign forces to acquire new technology which is available in the open market and the government can help local farmers acquire it. Not surprisingly, the Gulf countries are pleased with Pakistan’s rulers bending over backwards to accommodate their needs at the expense of the ordinary Pakistani – for none of the food produced on these lands will be available cheaply for Pakistanis; it will go to feed the Gulf populations.  Gulf countries are happy because their imported food bill will cost 20-25 per cent less, positively impacting on their present high inflation rate. We may import this food from them for a price, just as our government has now decided to import sugar from the UAE. Of course the UAE itself imports sugar so the absurdity should be abundantly clear to all, including our profiteers!

 In the visibly servile mindset of our leaders, instead of offering incentives on a similar scale to local farmers, Islamabad is offering legal and tax concessions, with legislative cover, to foreign investors in the form of specialized agricultural and livestock ‘free zones’ and may also introduce legislation to exempt such investors from government-imposed tax bans. The most worrisome aspect of such wheeling-dealing is the government’s decision to develop a new security force of 100,000 men spread across the four provinces to ensure stability of the Arab investments. This will cost the Pakistani state around $2 billion in terms of training and salaries and the real fear is that this force will be used to forcibly eject local small farmers from their lands. Concerns have been further heightened because no labour laws will be applicable to corporate agricultural companies and there will be no sales tax or customs duties on import of agricultural machinery by these investors. Nor will their dividends be taxed and 100 per cent remittances of capital and profits will be permitted. So where is there even an iota of advantage for the ordinary Pakistani as opposed to the rulers? 

With the US increasingly occupying Pakistan with their covert and overt armed presence, and the Gulf states taking over our rich agricultural lands our rulers are voluntarily making us a colony again – as we were under the British who used our men to fight their wars and our cheap labor to ship the finished produce back to Britain!

Have we come full circle after 62 years of our creation?
article author: Dr. Shireen Mazari

Jinnah’s PakNationalism: ‘Partition’ Never Happened

A book in India that praises Pakistan’s founder is being celebrated in Pakistan.  Pakistani commentators appear apologetic in trying to seek approval.  The book argues that Mohammad Ali Jinnah did not want Pakistan as a first choice.  This is a common mistake made both by Indian and western writers, and even some Pakistani intellectuals.  Pakistan was destined to happen, a result of ten centuries of Pakistani cultural, political and military presence in the region located between India, Iran and Afghanistan.  The Quaid-e-Azam, as Pakistanis reverently call their Great Leader, understood this and became the instrument for a cause larger than him.  The Indians need to correct one more fallacy: there was no ‘partition’ in 1947.

While we should thank India’s former foreign minister for his courage in praising the charismatic leader of Pakistan’s independence movement, we should stop behaving as if we are seeking validation and vindication.  Mr. Jaswant Singh’s book is not a Pakistani victory.  It is a sincere attempt by an Indian citizen to probe what is commonly known as partition, which itself is based on the false notion that a sovereign India was wrongly divided.  For us in Pakistan, we should realize that our independence – and not ‘partition’ – is steeped in both modern and old histories and requires no explanation.  [Continued below the picture]

Nice of Jaswant. But he is wrong in concluding Pakistan emerged because of Indian politics.  Pakistan was destined to happen. People like the Quaid-e-Azam and AllamaMohamed Iqbal were instruments in Pakistan’s rise, not the cause.  The cause goes deep in history.

Pakistani intellectuals continue to be afflicted with low self-esteem that prevents them from fashioning an interpretation of history supportive of the idea of Pakistani nationalism.  In this, our intellectuals are far behind the thinkers in Israel, for example, who achieved the impossible by reviving a 2,000-year-old dead language to gel a nation of diverse peoples.

Our politicians and thinkers failed to make something out of Pakistan in the past six decades mainly because of the lack of pride that comes from a sense of being, a sense of destiny, a sense of history.  This discussion is also important because we have seen brazen attempts during the last two years, especially in the US media, to promote the idea of Pakistan’s balkanization.

Finding a nationalistic motivation, a sort of PakNationalism, is essential.

The first thing Pakistanis need to know is that Pakistan was destined to happen.  Our leader, Mr. Jinnah, made it happen through his sheer brilliance because he was there.  But Pakistan was going to happen anyway, in some shape or form and at an opportune time, because of the force of history.  Pakistan was not a historical coincidence that the common historical version suggests and which Mr. Singh reinforced.  There is no coincidence in the fact that a quarter of a century before Quaid-e-Azam’s rise, a poet who wore a Turkish tarboosh (hat) and wrote Persian poetry predicted such a country.  Pakistan’s rise came exactly 90 years after the formal fall of the Mughal empire, Pakistan’s predecessor, which was the only India the world had known for centuries.  Except for that 90-year-long gap, Pakistan had existed in several shapes and forms and for at least ten centuries or more.

Our Indian friends have the right to debate the question of India’s supposed division.  But today’s India, born in 1947, was never divided or partitioned. It a historical fallacy to think that Pakistan was ever part of any united and sovereign Indian state.  The only thing that was divided in 1947 was a British colony that in turn was based on a defunct Muslim empire.  The Indian grievance about the ‘partition’ that is at the core of Indian animosity toward Pakistan is without base.

What is more surprising is how Pakistan’s intellectuals were drawn by Mr. Singh’s book to conclude that Pakistan’s founding father was an ‘Indian nationalist’ who did not want Pakistan as a first choice.  This is incorrect because it negates the force of history that favored Pakistan. Tens of millions of people wanted to be future Pakistani citizens before the country even existed.  The timely and superb leadership of Mr. Jinnah was an instrument, not the cause.

Sixty-two years later, Pakistanis shouldn’t be discussing details.  We know there was a Pakistan independence movement.  We know it was anchored in history.  We know that the fourth and fifth generations of today’s Pakistanis are more integrated than ever, sharing similar ethnic and cultural roots spread over three dynamic regions that surround Pakistan.

This is the reality of Mr. Jinnah’s PakNationalism.  And this is the only thing that matters.

Pakistani intellectuals continue to be afflicted with low self-esteem that prevents them from fashioning an interpretation of history supportive of the idea of Pakistani nationalism.  In this, our intellectuals are far behind the thinkers in Israel, for example, who achieved the impossible by reviving a 2,000-year-old dead language to gel a nation of diverse peoples. Our politicians and thinkers failed to make something out of Pakistan in the past six decades mainly because of the lack of pride that comes from a sense of being, a sense of destiny, a sense of history.  This discussion is also important because we have seen brazen attempts during the last two years, especially in the US media, to promote the idea of Pakistan’s balkanization.

Finding a nationalistic motivation, a sort of PakNationalism, is essential.

The first thing Pakistanis need to know is that Pakistan was destined to happen.  Our leader, Mr. Jinnah, made it happen through his sheer brilliance because he was there.  But Pakistan was going to happen anyway, in some shape or form and at an opportune time, because of the force of history.  Pakistan was not a historical coincidence that the common historical version suggests and which Mr. Singh reinforced.  There is no coincidence in the fact that a quarter of a century before Quaid-e-Azam’s rise, a poet who wore a Turkish tarboosh (hat) and wrote Persian poetry predicted such a country.  Pakistan’s rise came exactly 90 years after the formal fall of the Mughal empire, Pakistan’s predecessor, which was the only India the world had known for centuries.  Except for that 90-year-long gap, Pakistan had existed in several shapes and forms and for at least ten centuries or more.

Our Indian friends have the right to debate the question of India’s supposed division.  But today’s India, born in 1947, was never divided or partitioned. It a historical fallacy to think that Pakistan was ever part of any united and sovereign Indian state.  The only thing that was divided in 1947 was a British colony that in turn was based on a defunct Muslim empire.  The Indian grievance about the ‘partition’ that is at the core of Indian animosity toward Pakistan is without base.

What is more surprising is how Pakistan’s intellectuals were drawn by Mr. Singh’s book to conclude that Pakistan’s founding father was an ‘Indian nationalist’ who did not want Pakistan as a first choice.  This is incorrect because it negates the force of history that favored Pakistan. Tens of millions of people wanted to be future Pakistani citizens before the country even existed.  The timely and superb leadership of Mr. Jinnah was an instrument, not the cause.

Sixty-two years later, Pakistanis shouldn’t be discussing details.  We know there was a Pakistan independence movement.  We know it was anchored in history.  We know that the fourth and fifth generations of today’s Pakistanis are more integrated than ever, sharing similar ethnic and cultural roots spread over three dynamic regions that surround Pakistan.

Pakistan’s Quaid-e-Azam was a Pakistani nationalist.  He was the istrument that helped Pakistan fulfil its destiny, a destiny preordained by the force of history.

This is the reality of Mr. Jinnah’s PakNationalism.  And this is the only thing that matters.

Pakistanis Want US Declared ‘Hostile State’

Can Pakistan resist Pax Pox Americana?

When it is said to them: “Make not mischief on the Earth,” they say: “Why, we only want to make peace!” Holy Qur’an (2-11)

Wherever the Americans go, their policies spread poison. Under the pretext of ‘freedom and democracy’ US policy-makers trample over weaker nations, placing and replacing puppet rulers on a whim and propagandising against all aspirations for true independence. (Stephen Kinzer’s Overthrown is a must book to read in this context).

With total control of global media, and their weapons of mass distraction, they are able to crush resistance at the very root – before it even forms in the mind. Just as Noam Chomsky said, “If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged”.

Yet in spite of the ‘fasad-fil-ardh’ that America has unleashed around the world, we still see an unseemly obsession with all things American. Suffering from a mass psychosis akin to Stockholm-syndrome, even nations traumatised and brutalised by America see only America as possible salvation. Clearly, American propagandists have done their work well.

Not in Pakistan. In what can only be described as a clear and hopeful sign that this nation is awakening, recent polls have revealed that the Pakistani public categorically denounces American policies. A recently conducted poll by PakistanKaKhudaHafiz.com revealed that 89% of over 1,000 participants were of the opinion that the United States should be declared as a hostile state.

This only reinforces another scientifically conducted poll conducted by the Al-Jazeera network that found that over 70% of Pakistanis held America to be the greatest threat to the sovereignty and independence of Pakistan – even greater than arch-rival and eternal enemy India.

So great is this a problem for the Americans that when their Generals in the region are quizzed by journalists, they are more likely to be asked about the ‘battle for hearts and minds’ rather than actual battles. But in spite of the feigned concern in Washington, the widespread anti-Americanism is not too great a concern for US policymakers. After all, as far as the US is concerned, only Pakistan’s puppet leaders need be pro-US – the rest of Pakistan can go to hell. But in this lies the problem for the US. As the farcical reality of Pakistan’s democracy is becoming increasingly clear to the public at large, they are turning their ire not just on their puppet leaders, but on their foreign puppet-masters. And this does not bode well for US’s future plans for the region.

This anti-US mood in Pakistan is nothing new. It is a mode of thought that is familiar to most Pakistanis – and with good reason. US-Pak relations have always been fractious – not based on mutual trust and respect but on mutual suspicion and necessity. Every Pakistani, from street sweeper to industrialist, knows of the infamous incident in the early 1990’s when the US failed to deliver to Pakistan dozens of F16 fighter jets that Pakistan had already paid for – and not content with humiliating a proud nation enough, in a final salvo, they instead delivered of all things – wheat. The Pakistani public were not impressed to say the least.

But that is old hat. More recently, America has committed a litany of errors that can only lead an objective person to conclude that not only does the US not have Pakistan’s interest to heart, but they are only interested in marginalising and destabilising Pakistan through any means possible. The Pakistani people are not blind. They see the chicanery clearly:

* The ’surge’ in American troops in Afghanistan accompanied a ’surge’ in terrorism in Pakistan. While the Afghan Taliban never threatened Pakistani sovereignty, since 2001 thousands of innocents have been killed in a wave of suicide bombings in Pakistan that ‘coincidently’, only began after the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in 2001.

* The deliberate spread of the Afghan occupation into Pakistan and the treatment of both nations as a single theatre or ‘battlefield’ called AfPak. The notion that both nations are to be treated the same even though one is war-torn and primitive while the other has a sophisticated civic society is laughable, but the idea that American forces can strike into Pakistan with impunity is enough to make the average Pakistani’s blood boil.

* Wave after wave of callous and imprecise drone attacks. These achieve practically nothing while only murdering innocent civilians and riling up the Pakistani public who despair at their feckless government for being complicit in continual violations of the nations sovereignty and dignity.

* Since 2001 the US has turned a blind eye towards Indian Intelligence operations from inside Afghanistan designed to destabilize Pakistan. According to a report published in September 2008 by Brig (R) Asif Haroon Raja, India has 14 consulates in Afghanistan from which RAW is operating. In Wakhan, Badakshan province, RAW is operating a madarssah, where clerics from India are brainwashing local Afghans, Uzbeks and Tajiks. Their students are then infiltrated into Pakistan where they readily carry out suicide missions and other operations.This blatant infiltration into Afghanistan by the Indian intelligence apparatus has provided safe haven from which Indian agents attack and destabilize Pakistan’s tribal areas and NWFP.In another recent report from Foreign Affairs magazine, by Christine Fair of RAND Corporation gives us the inside: “Having visited the Indian mission in Zahedan, Iran, I can assure you they are not issuing visas as the main activity! Moreover, India has run operations from its mission in Mazar, Afghanistan (through which it supported the Northern Alliance) and is likely doing so from the other consulates it has reopened in Jalalabad and Qandahar along the border. Indian officials have told me privately that they are pumping money into Baluchistan. Kabul has encouraged India to engage in provocative activities such as using the Border Roads Organization to build sensitive parts of the Ring Road and use the Indo-Tibetan police force for security. It is also building schools on a sensitive part of the border in Kunar–across from Bajaur (Pakistan’s Tribal Area where Pakistan Army had to carry out a major operation to eliminate TTP militants).

* The continual barking by American officials for Pakistan to “DO MORE!” in spite of the fact that no nation has done or sacrificed more to combat terrorism in its own self-interest. The number of soldiers martyred, treasure spent and tears of widows and orphans shed is testimony to the truth that those who claim that Pakistan is half-hearted in this effort are liars.

* The CIA-sponsored democratic farce whereby American engineered its puppets to sieze the reigns in Pakistan’s recent elections. For those who still deny that the Pakistani elections were engineered, think for a moment how is it possible that the most corrupt and despised man in Pakistan’s entire history, Asif Zardari would become the president of Pakistan if the elections were truly and fairly democratic?

* Even though our ‘popularly elected’ politicians are in the pocket of the Americans, they remain frustrated that certain institutions in Pakistan remain out of their reach. The black propaganda targeting Pakistan’s patriotic armed forces, intelligence services and nuclear weapons arsenal reveals their obvious intent. Well-aware that these are the only institutions that truly have Pakistan’s interests to heart, the public do not appreciate the Am-Brit campaign to malign them.

* The so-called Indo-US civilian nuclear deal that makes a blatant mockery of the non-proliferation accords, rewarding Indian intransigence and arrogance at the expense of Pakistan’s national security.

* The exposure of blatant double-standards is evident as America turns on the weapons tap for India, whom it wishes to turn into its 21st century ’slave soldier’ in order to counter China, while Pakistani officials are left dangling and must debase and humiliate themselves in order to ensure the delivery of a trifling number of F-16’s and helicopters to fight the same enemies that America is sponsoring.

* The shielding, protection and nurturing of anti-Pakistan insurgent groups on Pakistani soil by the CIA. The so-called ‘Baluchistan Liberation Army’ (Read: Finding Clarity in the Baluchistan Conundrum, by Talha Mujaddidi ) and ‘Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan’ are only a few of many. All these groups base their insidious operations from inside Afghanistan – which is occupied by the US.

In spite of their indirect control over our media, America will never win the ‘battle of hearts and minds’ in Pakistan. Even though the rise of the so-called ‘free media’ in Pakistan has brought to the fore a variety rentashills and rentagobs, self proclaimed pseudo-intellectuals who solemnly insist that Pakistan cannot resist Pax Americana (Pox Americana would be more appropriate), the people are not so gullible as to believe it. They see the example of Iran and Venezuala, which although not ideal states by any means, at least demonstrate that those who resist American hegemony can still survive and even prosper.

Where there are pockets of resistance, this only demonstrates the existence of an honourable people who are not prepared to compromise on their dignity. The recent polling is cause for great hope. It proves what was never in doubt – the Pakistani population will not stand for these US violations of Pakistan’s sovereignty and national interest for much longer.

We know that we fear Allah more than we fear America, but the nation must now realise another profound truth – salvation does not lie in continued cooperation and debasement in front of America, but only in faith in Allah and is His Messenger (SAW). It is time for this nation to throw off its shackles and re-declare its independence.

Atif F Qureshi is part of the PKKH Editorial Team and also writes for PakDestiny.net

When it is said to them: “Make not mischief on the Earth,” they say: “Why, we only want to make peace!”
Holy Qur’an (2-11)

Wherever the Americans go, their policies spread poison. Under the pretext of ‘freedom and democracy’ US policy-makers trample over weaker nations, placing and replacing puppet rulers on a whim and propagandising against all aspirations for true independence. (Stephen Kinzer’s Overthrown is a must book to read in this context).

With total control of global media, and their weapons of mass distraction, they are able to crush resistance at the very root – before it even forms in the mind. Just as Noam Chomsky said, “If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged”. Yet in spite of the ‘fasad-fil-ardh’ that America has unleashed around the world, we still see an unseemly obsession with all things American. Suffering from a mass psychosis akin to Stockholm-syndrome, even nations traumatised and brutalised by America see only America as possible salvation. Clearly, American propagandists have done their work well. Not in Pakistan. In what can only be described as a clear and hopeful sign that this nation is awakening, recent polls have revealed that the Pakistani public categorically denounces American policies. A recently conducted poll by PakistanKaKhudaHafiz.com revealed that 89% of over 1,000 participants were of the opinion that the United States should be declared as a hostile state.

This only reinforces another scientifically conducted poll conducted by the Al-Jazeera network that found that over 70% of Pakistanis held America to be the greatest threat to the sovereignty and independence of Pakistan – even greater than arch-rival and eternal enemy India. So great is this a problem for the Americans that when their Generals in the region are quizzed by journalists, they are more likely to be asked about the ‘battle for hearts and minds’ rather than actual battles. But in spite of the feigned concern in Washington, the widespread anti-Americanism is not too great a concern for US policymakers. After all, as far as the US is concerned, only Pakistan’s puppet leaders need be pro-US – the rest of Pakistan can go to hell. But in this lies the problem for the US. As the farcical reality of Pakistan’s democracy is becoming increasingly clear to the public at large, they are turning their ire not just on their puppet leaders, but on their foreign puppet-masters. And this does not bode well for US’s future plans for the region. This anti-US mood in Pakistan is nothing new. It is a mode of thought that is familiar to most Pakistanis – and with good reason. US-Pak relations have always been fractious – not based on mutual trust and respect but on mutual suspicion and necessity. Every Pakistani, from street sweeper to industrialist, knows of the infamous incident in the early 1990’s when the US failed to deliver to Pakistan dozens of F16 fighter jets that Pakistan had already paid for – and not content with humiliating a proud nation enough, in a final salvo, they instead delivered of all things – wheat. The Pakistani public were not impressed to say the least.

But that is old hat. More recently, America has committed a litany of errors that can only lead an objective person to conclude that not only does the US not have Pakistan’s interest to heart, but they are only interested in marginalising and destabilising Pakistan through any means possible. The Pakistani people are not blind. They see the chicanery clearly:

* The ’surge’ in American troops in Afghanistan accompanied a ’surge’ in terrorism in Pakistan. While the Afghan Taliban never threatened Pakistani sovereignty, since 2001 thousands of innocents have been killed in a wave of suicide bombings in Pakistan that ‘coincidently’, only began after the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in 2001.

* The deliberate spread of the Afghan occupation into Pakistan and the treatment of both nations as a single theatre or ‘battlefield’ called AfPak. The notion that both nations are to be treated the same even though one is war-torn and primitive while the other has a sophisticated civic society is laughable, but the idea that American forces can strike into Pakistan with impunity is enough to make the average Pakistani’s blood boil.

* Wave after wave of callous and imprecise drone attacks. These achieve practically nothing while only murdering innocent civilians and riling up the Pakistani public who despair at their feckless government for being complicit in continual violations of the nations sovereignty and dignity.

* Since 2001 the US has turned a blind eye towards Indian Intelligence operations from inside Afghanistan designed to destabilize Pakistan. According to a report published in September 2008 by Brig (R) Asif Haroon Raja, India has 14 consulates in Afghanistan from which RAW is operating. In Wakhan, Badakshan province, RAW is operating a madarssah, where clerics from India are brainwashing local Afghans, Uzbeks and Tajiks. Their students are then infiltrated into Pakistan where they readily carry out suicide missions and other operations.This blatant infiltration into Afghanistan by the Indian intelligence apparatus has provided safe haven from which Indian agents attack and destabilize Pakistan’s tribal areas and NWFP.In another recent report from Foreign Affairs magazine, by Christine Fair of RAND Corporation gives us the inside: “Having visited the Indian mission in Zahedan, Iran, I can assure you they are not issuing visas as the main activity! Moreover, India has run operations from its mission in Mazar, Afghanistan (through which it supported the Northern Alliance) and is likely doing so from the other consulates it has reopened in Jalalabad and Qandahar along the border. Indian officials have told me privately that they are pumping money into Baluchistan. Kabul has encouraged India to engage in provocative activities such as using the Border Roads Organization to build sensitive parts of the Ring Road and use the Indo-Tibetan police force for security. It is also building schools on a sensitive part of the border in Kunar–across from Bajaur (Pakistan’s Tribal Area where Pakistan Army had to carry out a major operation to eliminate TTP militants).

* The continual barking by American officials for Pakistan to “DO MORE!” in spite of the fact that no nation has done or sacrificed more to combat terrorism in its own self-interest. The number of soldiers martyred, treasure spent and tears of widows and orphans shed is testimony to the truth that those who claim that Pakistan is half-hearted in this effort are liars.

* The CIA-sponsored democratic farce whereby American engineered its puppets to sieze the reigns in Pakistan’s recent elections. For those who still deny that the Pakistani elections were engineered, think for a moment how is it possible that the most corrupt and despised man in Pakistan’s entire history, Asif Zardari would become the president of Pakistan if the elections were truly and fairly democratic?

* Even though our ‘popularly elected’ politicians are in the pocket of the Americans, they remain frustrated that certain institutions in Pakistan remain out of their reach. The black propaganda targeting Pakistan’s patriotic armed forces, intelligence services and nuclear weapons arsenal reveals their obvious intent. Well-aware that these are the only institutions that truly have Pakistan’s interests to heart, the public do not appreciate the Am-Brit campaign to malign them.

* The so-called Indo-US civilian nuclear deal that makes a blatant mockery of the non-proliferation accords, rewarding Indian intransigence and arrogance at the expense of Pakistan’s national security.

* The exposure of blatant double-standards is evident as America turns on the weapons tap for India, whom it wishes to turn into its 21st century ’slave soldier’ in order to counter China, while Pakistani officials are left dangling and must debase and humiliate themselves in order to ensure the delivery of a trifling number of F-16’s and helicopters to fight the same enemies that America is sponsoring.

* The shielding, protection and nurturing of anti-Pakistan insurgent groups on Pakistani soil by the CIA. The so-called ‘Baluchistan Liberation Army’ (Read: Finding Clarity in the Baluchistan Conundrum, by Talha Mujaddidi ) and ‘Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan’ are only a few of many. All these groups base their insidious operations from inside Afghanistan – which is occupied by the US. In spite of their indirect control over our media, America will never win the ‘battle of hearts and minds’ in Pakistan. Even though the rise of the so-called ‘free media’ in Pakistan has brought to the fore a variety rentashills and rentagobs, self proclaimed pseudo-intellectuals who solemnly insist that Pakistan cannot resist Pax Americana (Pox Americana would be more appropriate), the people are not so gullible as to believe it. They see the example of Iran and Venezuala, which although not ideal states by any means, at least demonstrate that those who resist American hegemony can still survive and even prosper.

Where there are pockets of resistance, this only demonstrates the existence of an honourable people who are not prepared to compromise on their dignity. The recent polling is cause for great hope. It proves what was never in doubt – the Pakistani population will not stand for these US violations of Pakistan’s sovereignty and national interest for much longer. We know that we fear Allah more than we fear America, but the nation must now realise another profound truth – salvation does not lie in continued cooperation and debasement in front of America, but only in faith in Allah and is His Messenger (SAW). It is time for this nation to throw off its shackles and re-declare its independence.

Atif F Qureshi is part of the PKKH Editorial Team and also writes for PakDestiny.net

US Government Website Supports Terror In Balochistan

A newly formed blogger network of Pakistani Bloggers namely Union of Patriotic Bloggers for Sovereign Pakistan (UPBSP) has started a “Containment of USA” Campaign  which aims at containing the US role inside Pakistan and confining it to its diplomatic role guaranteed under the international law.  The other aim of the campaign is to compel Pakistani politicians and rulers to act in the best interest of a proud and sovereign Pakistan as dreamed by the Founding Fathers, the Quaid-e-Azam and Allama Iqbal.  Hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis have given great sacrifices during the Pakistan independence movement so that today’s generation lives in a sovereign and independent state.It is imperative to mention some of the criminal activities of world Terrorist No-1 and rogue state, United State of America.

Some US government departments are quietly preparing the ground for the warlike act of recognizing Pakistan’s Balochistan province as an independent state by assigning a separate checklist to Balochistan against the “Country of citizenship” column of Immigration Form for non-US nationals.  This is one step forward in several steps taken by the United States, or by some powerful elements within the US government, to turn into reality the designs for the so-called Free Baluchistan explained in Blood Borders, the article written by a US military officer a couple of years ago, as also pointed out by Awab Alvi. 

Ahmed Quraishi’s website provides much stuff about the Blackwater’s activities in Peshawar.  The construction of US Castle in Islamabad and suspicious activities of US marines near the brigade headquarters of Pakistan’s Special Operation Task Force (SOTF) in Turbilla are well exposed by Saleem Shehzad in Asia times online. 

We have no objection if US embassy in Islamabad and its consulates in Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar work in the framework of International Law.  However, unlawful activities in the name of the so-called war on terror and expanding an intrusive presence are unacceptable and will be resisted through peaceful struggle that may also culminate in the end of the present regime that rules Pakistan. We also urge the present government to act as a government of Pakistan and not as an agent of the United States. 

We assure that the patriotic and nationalistic younger generation of Pakistanis, women and men, will stand by our government and army if they resisted the US expansionist designs. The schedule for rallies and demonstrations will be announced shortly. Any Pakistani Blogger can join the network by simply emailing us his/her consent to upbspakistan@gmail.com 

Please send your resentments under subject “Containment of USA In Pakistan” at the following address: 

Richard Snelsire
Press Attaché and Country Information Officer

Musharraf Gets Sympathy, Thanks To The Mess Of His Opponents In Pakistan

Former President Musharraf failed in the most basic task the Pakistani people expected of him: To reform the destructive Pakistani politics. He shunned good advice, allied with the corrupt and then passed NRO, bringing to power all those who were tried, tested and discredited in the 1990s. For educated Pakistanis to spend money from their own pockets to come down to London and rally in Mr. Musharraf’s support, it means something. Mr. Nawaz Sharif and Mr. Asif Zardari would have to pay money to organize such events and even then they wouldn’t attract most educated middle class Pakistanis. So why these people are spending their own money to organize this event despite Mr. Musharraf’s failures? This shows how disappointed most Pakistanis have become with the politics and the political system in their homeland. Nowhere else in the world are politics so violent, destructive and monopolized by a few like they are in Pakistan.

Thank you very much for yesterday.  I think it was a brilliant effort and display of passion for President Musharraf.I t was organized by a small group of volunteers, The Musharraf Supporters Alliance UK.I was really amazed by the enthusiasm of many who had travelled from various Universities and other cities just by receiving the message from the Internet. There were people from all walks of life, particularly the elderly who said they had huge concerns regarding Pakistan and who criticized the leadership of Zardari and Nawaz and CJ Chaudhry.  They also criticized the meddling of Britain’s Lord Nazir in Pakistani politics.They further said it is their concern for Pakistan that has brought them out and to the street.  They consider Musharraf has a thought process and grip on all the national and international challenges Pakistan faces at present.

Most of the people were politically aware, disillusioned at the current situation of Pakistan and tired of seeing a new chapter of the ‘tug of war’ politics of Nawaz, CJ Chaudhry, Zardari and their joint revenge policies against Musharraf, who had a reconciliatory approach towards all of them. It was heartening to see many young ladies and their support for Musharraf.  It is for the first time that educated young students from Pakistan came to support a political leader.  Norm of Pakistani society is that women just support or attend the rally wherever their father or brother accompanies them.

Yesterday I think every individual who came there had made a sacrifice of their time, faced the delays of London Underground, spent money from their pockets and came to support Musharraf without getting any benefit out of it.  Whereas the rallies organized by Nawaz and PPP are funded from the pockets of their party ‘owner-leaders’.
Yesterdays protest was fuelled with passion of Musharraf Supporters.  Remind you the call for this rally did not come from Pervez Musharraf. Everyone present considered Musharraf a moderate leader who facilitated democracy and the core message was: “Musharraf might be in uniform when he took the office but in past eight years he has transformed and emerged as a mature politician.  Despite the manner in which both Nawaz and Zardari won votes, there is every likelihood that people still would like to see Musharraf back into power.” Media people asked some interesting questions one of them being

1. Do you Support what Musharraf did at Lal Masjid?

Response was: If whatever happened at Red Mosque was wrong than whatever action present government is taking in Swat is wrong if Swat is right now then Red Mosque was right as well.

2. The most asked question was: Do you support a dictator?

The response was different but two versions I will quote:

a. Musharraf was never a dictator. Musharraf gave us freedom of expression and civil liberties.

b. We would never support military rule but during Musharraf’s reign, it was not military rule.

Musharraf was more of a civil general and much better than the dictatorial and autocratic Nawaz and Zardari who like act and behave as dictators and crave absolute powers. Also there was a visible shift in people’s thoughts and their perception.  A realization is growing that a democracy under PPP and Nawaz is worse than Musharraf’s rule.  Therefore, they support Musharraf.

There were people from working class as well who attended the rally.

Pakistan Expels American As US NGO Found Operating As Cover For Blackwater In Pakistan?

Reports suggest Pakistan has expelled a US Blackwater mercenary, but Pakistanis ask,  ‘Who rules our streets, the Pakistani government or the Americans?’ And who let them in?

In May, a US diplomat was caught arranging a meeting between a suspected Indian spy and senior Pakistani officials in the privacy of her house.  In June when Pakistani officials confronted Washington with evidence that terrorists in Pakistan were using sophisticated American weapons, US media quickly leaked stories about American weapons missing from the US-trained Afghan army.  And now reports confirm that the dirty secret arm of the US government – the mercenaries of Blackwater – have infiltrated sensitive regions of Pakistan.  Blackwater works as an extension of the US military and CIA, taking care of dirty jobs that the US government cannot associate itself with in faraway strategic places.  The question: Who let them in?  And who deported one of them, if at all?

Three weeks ago a group of concerned Pakistani citizens in Peshawar wrote to the federal interior ministry to complain about the suspicious activities of a group of shadowy Americans in a rented house in their neighborhood, the upscale University Town area of Peshawar.

A NGO calling itself Creative Associates International, Inc.leased the house.  CAII,as it is known by its acronym, is a Washington DC-based private firm.  According to its Web site, the company describes itself as “a privately-owned non-governmental organization that addresses urgent challenges facing societies today … Creative views change as an opportunity to improve, transform and renew …”

The description makes no sense. It is more or less a perfect cover for the American NGO’s real work: espionage.

The incorporated NGO is more of a humanitarian front that alternates sometimes for undercover US intelligence operations in critical regions,including Angola, Sri Lanka, Iraq, Gaza, and Pakistan.  Of the 36 new job openings, the company’s Web site shows that half of them are in Pakistan today.  Pakistan is also at the heart of the now combined desperate effort by the White House-military-CIA to avert a looming American defeat in Afghanistan by shifting the war to its next-door neighbor.

In Peshawar, CAII, opened an office to work on projects in the nearby tribal agencies of Pakistan.  All of these projects, interestingly, are linked to the US government. CAII’s other projects outside Pakistan are also linked to the US government.  In short, this NGO is not an NGO. It is closely linked to the US government.

In Peshawar,CAII told Pakistani authorities it needed to hire security guards for protection. The security guards, it turns out, were none other than Blackwater’s military-trained hired guns.  They were used the CAII cover to conduct a range of covert activities in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province.

The infamous Blackwater private security firm operates as an extension of the US military and CIA, taking care of dirty jobs that the US government cannot associate itself with in faraway strategic places.  Blackwater is anything but a security firm. It is a mercenary army of several thousand hired soldiers.

Pakistani security officials apparently became alarmed by reports that Blackwater was operating from the office of CAII on Chinar Road, University Town in Peshawar. The man in charge of the office, allegedly an American by the name of Craig Davis according to a report in Jang, Pakistan’s largest Urdu language daily, was arrested and accused of establishing contacts with ‘the enemies of Pakistan’ in areas adjoining Afghanistan. His visa has been cancelled, the office sealed, and Mr.Davis reportedly expelled back to the United States.

It is not clear when Mr. Davis was deported and whether there are other members of the staff expelled along with him. When I contacted the US Embassy over the weekend, spokesman Richard Snelsire’s first reaction was, “No embassy official has been deported.” This defensive answer is similar to the guilt-induced reactions of US embassy staffers in Baghdad and Kabul at the presence of mercenaries working for US military and CIA.

I said to Mr.Snelsire that I did not ask about an embassy official being expelled. He said he heard these reports and ‘checked around’ with the embassy officials but no one knew about this. “It’s baseless.”

So I asked him,”Is Blackwater operating in Pakistan, in Peshawar?”

“Not to my knowledge.”  Fair enough. The US embassies in Baghdad and Kabul never acknowledged Blackwater’s operations in Iraq and Afghanistan either. This is part of low-level frictions between the diplomats at the US Department of State and those in Pentagon and CIA. The people at State have reportedly made it clear they will not acknowledge or accept responsibility for the activities of special operations agents operating in friendly countries without the knowledge of those countries and in violation of their sovereignty.  Reports have suggested that sometimes even the US ambassador is unaware of what his government’s mercenaries do in a target country.

Official Pakistani sources are yet to confirm if one or more US citizens were expelled recently.  The government is also reluctant in making public whatever evidence there might be about Blackwater operations inside Pakistan.  But it is clear that something unusual was happening in the Peshawar office of an American NGO.  There is also strong suspicion that Blackwater was operating from the said office.

There are other things happening in Pakistan that are linked to the Americans and that increase the chances of Blackwater’s presence here.

These include:

1.One of the largest US embassies – or military and intelligence command outposts – in the world is being built in Islamabad as I write this at a cost of approximately one billion US dollars.  This is the biggest sign of an expansion in US meddling in Pakistan and a desire to use this country as a base for regional operations.  Interestingly, US covert meddling inside Pakistan and nearby countries is already taking place, including in Russia’s backyard, in Iran, and in China’s Xinjiang.

2.A large number of retired Pakistani military officers, academics and even journalists have been quietly recruited at generous compensations by several US government agencies.  These influential Pakistanis are supposed to provide information, analysis, contacts and help in pleading the case for US interests in the Pakistani media, in subtle ways.  Pakistanis would be surprised that some prominent names well known to television audiences are in this list.

3.CIA and possibly Blackwater have established a network of informers in the tribal belt and Balochistan; there have also been reports of non-Pakistanis sighted close to sensitive military areas in the country.  Considering the intensity and frequency of terrorist acts inside Pakistan in the past four years, there is every possibility that all sorts of saboteurs are having a field day in Pakistan.

4.Members of separatist and ethnic political parties have been cultivated by various US government agencies and quietly taken for visits to Washington and the CENTCOM offices in Florida.The possibility of the existence of mercenary activities in Pakistan is strengthened by the following events:

5.Pakistani officials have in recent months collected piles of evidence that suggests that terrorists wreaking havoc inside Pakistan have been and continue to receive state of the art weapons and a continuous supply of money and trainers from unknown but highly organized sources inside Afghanistan.  A significant number of these weapons is of American and Israeli manufacture.  Indians have also been known to supply third-party weapons to terrorists inside Pakistan.

6.Some Pakistani intelligence analysts have stumbled on circumstantial evidence that links the CIA to anti-Pakistan terror activities that may not be in the knowledge of all departments of the US government.  One thing is for sure, that CIA’s operations in Afghanistan are in the hands of dangerous elements that are prone to rogue-ish behavior.

7.In May, a US woman diplomat was caught arranging a quiet [read ‘secret’] meeting between a low-level Indian diplomat and several senior Pakistani government officials.  An address in Islamabad – 152 Margalla Road – was identified as a venue where the secret meeting took place.  The American diplomat in question knew there was no chance the Indian would get to meet the Pakistanis in normal circumstances.  Nor was it possible to do this during a high visibility event.  After the incident, Pakistan Foreign Office issued a terse statement warning all government officials to refrain from such direct contact with foreign diplomats in unofficial settings without prior intimation to their departments.

8.Pakistani suspicions about American foul play inside Pakistan are not new.  On July 12, 2008 in a secret meeting in Rawalpindi between military and intelligence officials from the two countries these concerns were openly aired.  The Americans accused ISI of maintain contacts with the Afghan Taliban. The Pakistani answer was that normal low-level contacts are maintained with all parties in the area.  NATO and the Kabul regime were doing the same thing in Afghanistan. In return, the Pakistanis laid out evidence, including photographs, showing known terrorists meeting Indian and pro-US Kabul regime officials. Was the United States supporting these anti-Pakistan activities is the question that was posed to the US military and CIA.

9.Further back into history, in 1978 the ISI broke a spy ring made up of Pakistani technicians working for the nascent Pakistani nuclear program who were recruited by CIA.  Pakistan chose not to raise the issue publicly but did so privately at the highest level in Washington.

Now there are reports that the Zardari-Gilani government is consulting Pakistan’s Naval headquarters on a proposal to construct a US navy base on the coast of Balochistan.  When things have reached this level of American meddling in Pakistan, Blackwater seems like a small issue.  Some Pakistani analysts are of the view that elements within the Pakistani security establishment need to be very careful about where they intend to draw the red line for CIA operations in and around Pakistan.

Three weeks ago a group of concerned Pakistani citizens in Peshawar wrote to the federal interior ministry to complain about the suspicious activities of a group of shadowy Americans in a rented house in their neighborhood, the upscale University Town area of Peshawar.

A NGO calling itself Creative Associates International, Inc.leased the house. CAII,as it is known by its acronym, is a Washington DC-based private firm.  According to its Web site, the company describes itself as “a privately-owned non-governmental organization that addresses urgent challenges facing societies today … Creative views change as an opportunity to improve, transform and renew …”

The description makes no sense. It is more or less a perfect cover for the American NGO’s real work: espionage.  The incorporated NGO is more of a humanitarian front that alternates sometimes for undercover US intelligence operations in critical regions,including Angola, Sri Lanka, Iraq, Gaza, and Pakistan.  Of the 36 new job openings, the company’s Web site shows that half of them are in Pakistan today.  Pakistan is also at the heart of the now combined desperate effort by the White House-military-CIA to avert a looming American defeat in Afghanistan by shifting the war to its next-door neighbor.

In Peshawar, CAII, opened an office to work on projects in the nearby tribal agencies of Pakistan.  All of these projects, interestingly, are linked to the US government. CAII’s other projects outside Pakistan are also linked to the US government.  In short, this NGO is not an NGO. It is closely linked to the US government. In Peshawar,CAII told Pakistani authorities it needed to hire security guards for protection. The security guards, it turns out, were none other than Blackwater’s military-trained hired guns.  They were used the CAII cover to conduct a range of covert activities in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province.

The infamous Blackwater private security firm operates as an extension of the US military and CIA, taking care of dirty jobs that the US government cannot associate itself with in faraway strategic places.  Blackwater is anything but a security firm. It is a mercenary army of several thousand hired soldiers.

Pakistani security officials apparently became alarmed by reports that Blackwater was operating from the office of CAII on Chinar Road, University Town in Peshawar. The man in charge of the office, allegedly an American by the name of Craig Davis according to a report in Jang, Pakistan’s largest Urdu language daily, was arrested and accused of establishing contacts with ‘the enemies of Pakistan’ in areas adjoining Afghanistan. His visa has been cancelled, the office sealed, and Mr.Davis reportedly expelled back to the United States.

It is not clear when Mr. Davis was deported and whether there are other members of the staff expelled along with him. When I contacted the US Embassy over the weekend, spokesman Richard Snelsire’s first reaction was, “No embassy official has been deported.” This defensive answer is similar to the guilt-induced reactions of US embassy staffers in Baghdad and Kabul at the presence of mercenaries working for US military and CIA.

I said to Mr.Snelsire that I did not ask about an embassy official being expelled. He said he heard these reports and ‘checked around’ with the embassy officials but no one knew about this. “It’s baseless.” So I asked him,”Is Blackwater operating in Pakistan, in Peshawar?”

“Not to my knowledge.”  Fair enough. The US embassies in Baghdad and Kabul never acknowledged Blackwater’s operations in Iraq and Afghanistan either. This is part of low-level frictions between the diplomats at the US Department of State and those in Pentagon and CIA. The people at State have reportedly made it clear they will not acknowledge or accept responsibility for the activities of special operations agents operating in friendly countries without the knowledge of those countries and in violation of their sovereignty.  Reports have suggested that sometimes even the US ambassador is unaware of what his government’s mercenaries do in a target country.

Official Pakistani sources are yet to confirm if one or more US citizens were expelled recently.  The government is also reluctant in making public whatever evidence there might be about Blackwater operations inside Pakistan.  But it is clear that something unusual was happening in the Peshawar office of an American NGO.  There is also strong suspicion that Blackwater was operating from the said office. There are other things happening in Pakistan that are linked to the Americans and that increase the chances of Blackwater’s presence here.

These include:

1. One of the largest US embassies – or military and intelligence command outposts – in the world is being built in Islamabad as I write this at a cost of approximately one billion US dollars.  This is the biggest sign of an expansion in US meddling in Pakistan and a desire to use this country as a base for regional operations.  Interestingly, US covert meddling inside Pakistan and nearby countries is already taking place, including in Russia’s backyard, in Iran, and in China’s Xinjiang.

2. A large number of retired Pakistani military officers, academics and even journalists have been quietly recruited at generous compensations by several US government agencies.  These influential Pakistanis are supposed to provide information, analysis, contacts and help in pleading the case for US interests in the Pakistani media, in subtle ways.  Pakistanis would be surprised that some prominent names well known to television audiences are in this list.

3. CIA and possibly Blackwater have established a network of informers in the tribal belt and Balochistan; there have also been reports of non-Pakistanis sighted close to sensitive military areas in the country.  Considering the intensity and frequency of terrorist acts inside Pakistan in the past four years, there is every possibility that all sorts of saboteurs are having a field day in Pakistan.

4. Members of separatist and ethnic political parties have been cultivated by various US government agencies and quietly taken for visits to Washington and the CENTCOM offices in Florida.The possibility of the existence of mercenary activities in Pakistan is strengthened by the following events:

5. Pakistani officials have in recent months collected piles of evidence that suggests that terrorists wreaking havoc inside Pakistan have been and continue to receive state of the art weapons and a continuous supply of money and trainers from unknown but highly organized sources inside Afghanistan.  A significant number of these weapons is of American and Israeli manufacture.  Indians have also been known to supply third-party weapons to terrorists inside Pakistan.

6. Some Pakistani intelligence analysts have stumbled on circumstantial evidence that links the CIA to anti-Pakistan terror activities that may not be in the knowledge of all departments of the US government.  One thing is for sure, that CIA’s operations in Afghanistan are in the hands of dangerous elements that are prone to rogue-ish behavior.

7. In May, a US woman diplomat was caught arranging a quiet [read ‘secret’] meeting between a low-level Indian diplomat and several senior Pakistani government officials.  An address in Islamabad – 152 Margalla Road – was identified as a venue where the secret meeting took place.  The American diplomat in question knew there was no chance the Indian would get to meet the Pakistanis in normal circumstances.  Nor was it possible to do this during a high visibility event.  After the incident, Pakistan Foreign Office issued a terse statement warning all government officials to refrain from such direct contact with foreign diplomats in unofficial settings without prior intimation to their departments.

8. Pakistani suspicions about American foul play inside Pakistan are not new.  On July 12, 2008 in a secret meeting in Rawalpindi between military and intelligence officials from the two countries these concerns were openly aired.  The Americans accused ISI of maintain contacts with the Afghan Taliban. The Pakistani answer was that normal low-level contacts are maintained with all parties in the area.  NATO and the Kabul regime were doing the same thing in Afghanistan. In return, the Pakistanis laid out evidence, including photographs, showing known terrorists meeting Indian and pro-US Kabul regime officials. Was the United States supporting these anti-Pakistan activities is the question that was posed to the US military and CIA.

9. Further back into history, in 1978 the ISI broke a spy ring made up of Pakistani technicians working for the nascent Pakistani nuclear program who were recruited by CIA.  Pakistan chose not to raise the issue publicly but did so privately at the highest level in Washington.

Now there are reports that the Zardari-Gilani government is consulting Pakistan’s Naval headquarters on a proposal to construct a US navy base on the coast of Balochistan.  When things have reached this level of American meddling in Pakistan, Blackwater seems like a small issue.  Some Pakistani analysts are of the view that elements within the Pakistani security establishment need to be very careful about where they intend to draw the red line for CIA operations in and around Pakistan.

Source: Ahmed Quraishi

Why I’m An Ungrateful Pakistani, Mr. Holbrooke

… and why you don’t have a clue why the number of the ungrateful is increasing.  The reason is that your media and policy formulators stop you from considering a viewpoint like mine by dismissing it as anti-Americanism.  My concern is the rabid anti-Pakistanism that has permeated Washington after we helped you occupy Afghanistan.

Mr. Holbrooke with federal minister Hina Rabbani in Islamabad on 22 July 2009.

Pakistan’s relationship with the United States remains rocky despite the recent assassination of Baitullah Mehsud.  Let’s not mince words here.  We want this relationship to improve and there are many in Washington who want nothing more than this.  But there is a legacy of mistrust.  Last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates attributed this trust deficit to America abandoning Pakistan after the anti-Soviet war. But that is not the whole truth.  That is an old legacy.  There is a newer legacy now weighing down on Pak-US ties.  It has to do with the period between 2002 and 2009.Like most US officials, either Mr. Gates did not want to mention it or he is simply not aware of it.

Mehsud was an anti-Pakistan terrorist and not an anti-US terrorist.  There is no evidence that he posed any threat to the US occupation forces in Afghanistan.  He introduced ruthless methods of terrorism in Pakistan that were unknown here and more common to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  Interestingly, these methods of terror arrived in Pakistan shortly after the arrival of the American military-intelligence setup in Afghanistan.We have reason to believe this was not just the function of American soldiers attracting Iraqi suicide bombers and trainers all the way to Afghanistan.  That claim remains unverifiable at best, and is self-serving.

Considering Baitullah Mehsud’s base of operations, geographically and logistically the only source of money and weapons to sustain his anti-Pakistan war was American-controlled Afghanistan.  His fighters fought Pakistan with American dollars and American weapons.  The drug money in Afghanistan increased manifold under the US military.  The people involved in this trade were and continue to be hardcore US allies in Afghanistan and part of the US puppet regime in Kabul.

Washington used Pakistan to help occupy Afghanistan.  Once done, America turned its back to Pakistan and gradually turned Afghanistan into a hub for anti-Pakistan forces, from Northern Alliance warlords, Indian intelligence operatives to Pakistan-averse US military and intelligence officers.

There is little reason to believe that President Obama has weaned America off the policy of regional destabilization and adventurism that the Bush-Cheney combine pursued in Afghanistan.

Let me show you a quick list of the mess that we believe has its origins in US-occupied Afghanistan:

1.       Systematic and cruel methods of targeting innocent civilians by shadowy terrorists meant to spread fear and instability:  This manifested itself inside Pakistan in deliberate cutting of hands and feet and throat slitting, photographing the acts and then sending them to newspaper offices and posting them online.  The victims were innocent Pakistanis. This terror achieved no specific goal except spreading fear and chaos, all the hallmarks of proxy wars.

2.      Secret organizations backed by CIA that claim representation of Balochis:   In Pakistan the separatist BLA, a proxy created by the Soviet Union, rose from the dead in 2005; while in Iran a different Baloch group was created with a Sunni composition to spark a Shia-Sunni conflict in Iran.  Of course, the Balochis, whether in Iran or Pakistan, never had anything to do with both groups.

3.      Attempts were made to spark region-wide Shia-Sunni conflict to parallel the sectarian killing fields in America’s Iraq.  Shia-Sunni tensions went up from Lebanon to Yemen.  This created a sectarian polarization favorable to an American war against Iran with the support of the Arab countries along with Pakistan, Turkey and Afghanistan.  It is another story that this sectarian strife failed to catch up.

4.      In Pakistan, Washington managed to install a government of its liking without a war or invasion by manipulating an insecure and shortsighted Pervez Musharraf.  The result is probably the most inept and corrupt government in the modern history of the country.  This pro-US government could also prove fatal for the nation’s long-term stability because of its inability to govern and because of its foreign [read: American-British] linked loyalties and interests.

For five long years, from 2004 to 2009, Pakistanis accepted the growing mess in the region as a byproduct of extremism, terrorism, Taliban, al Qaeda or whatever name America’s ‘terrorism industry’ chose to give to this mess.  But as they emerged from the mess, Pakistanis put the individual pieces of evidence in their hands together to discover that someone in Afghanistan was actively shifting the war to Pakistan.  This is when the entire Am-Brit media began demonizing Pakistan as the world’s next Iraq, spreading a fake global alarm over its well-developed nuclear and strategic arsenal using silly scenarios and releasing planted stories warning the world of the impending need for invading Pakistan.

Pakistanis also collected enough evidence that confirmed how a US-controlled Afghanistan was allowed by someone in Washington to be used to create and direct insurgencies and rebellions inside Pakistan.  In other words, create and nurture terrorism and instability inside Pakistan.

Some lobbies within either Pentagon or the CIA, or both, were involved in this act of covert aggression against Pakistan, with the connivance of India and Kabul’s American puppet regime.

HOW THE AMERICAN DUPLICITY WAS CHECKED

Four factors changed the regional scene in the past few months:

1.       Pakistan’s Military:  The GHQ in Rawalpindi put its foot down on the question of Indian use of Afghan soil to export terror to Pakistan and the many signs that the CIA was protecting some of the anti-Pakistan terrorists inside Pakistan’s tribal belt.  A clear message was conveyed from Rawalpindi to Tampa: Stop it or lose the Pakistan supply route for NATO and US military in Afghanistan.

2.      The global economic meltdown.

3.      The change of guard in Washington.

4.      The growing failure of the American occupation of Afghanistan and the panic this created inside a new administration in Washington.

Over the past thirteen months, Baitullah Mehsud’s activities and his bottomless Afghan supply lines became a bone of contention between Pakistan and the United States, starting from a July 2008 meeting in Rawalpindi between Pakistani and American military and intelligence commanders.  In this meeting, the CIA or elements within it were accused directly of supporting terrorism inside Pakistan and deviating from the stated US government policy.  The incumbent Pakistan army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani was present in this meeting.

It is interesting how the mainstream American media refuses to cover this side of the story of terrorism inside Pakistan.  In June, one of Baitullah’s former senior aides, Qari Zainuddin Mehsud, held a press conference attended by the Pakistani and international media where he accused Baitullah’s terror army of receiving support from Americans and Indians inside Afghanistan.  He was killed while asleep within a week in a stealth attack by an assassin.

So, why did CIA drones attack Baitullah Mehsud this time?

After the July 2008 meeting, CIA dragged its feet over Baitullah Mehsud.  The Pakistani government was too weak and too indebted to Washington to raise this issue and India’s terror outposts in Afghanistan.  It was the military-to-military channel between Islamabad and Washington that helped break the deadlock.  This is how William Burns was sent to New Delhi in June to ask India to stand down in Afghanistan.  Around the same time, CIA began sending drones to Baitullah’s territory.

So should we in Pakistan be grateful to CIA, its drones, and to the United States for eliminating Baitullah Mehsud?  Hardly.

Our problems will persist as long as the unjust and mismanaged Afghan occupation continues, with Washington ignoring Pakistan’s vital security and strategic interests in the region and focusing only on its own.

IMPERIAL US EMABSSY?

What is stunning is how the elected Pakistani government is sanctioning the construction of probably the largest US embassy in the world in Islamabad.  Just in the past two weeks, there have been several incidents of US diplomats carrying loaded weapons in public inside the Pakistani capital.  In one incident a US diplomat carrying a weapon manhandled a Pakistani police officer outside the US embassy compound.  The diplomat reportedly cursed the country that is hosting him.  After some unnamed government officials suggested the diplomat might be deported, the whole story died down.  The expansion work underway at the fortified embassy suggests that a military base of some sort is under construction, with sleeping barracks for hundreds of people.

Pakistan is not Iraq or Afghanistan under US occupation.  So regardless of the silence of both President Asif Zardari and the supposed opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, who both are looking to Washington to accumulate power, strong resentment is brewing against this imperial American construction in the heart of the Pakistani capital.

Pakistan’s core contention with the US persists:  how the US turned Afghanistan into a hub for anti-Pakistan forces from within and outside the region.  US-occupied Afghanistan is a source of destabilizing Pakistan, China, Iran and Russia.

Washington has become more sensitive to Islamabad recently because of the factors discussed above.  But Pakistanis have little reason to believe that this American change of heart is little more than the result of the difficult circumstances.

Pakistan’s relationship with the United States remains rocky despite the recent assassination of Baitullah Mehsud.  Let’s not mince words here.  We want this relationship to improve and there are many in Washington who want nothing more than this.  But there is a legacy of mistrust.  Last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates attributed this trust deficit to America abandoning Pakistan after the anti-Soviet war. But that is not the whole truth.  That is an old legacy.  There is a newer legacy now weighing down on Pak-US ties.  It has to do with the period between 2002 and 2009.

Like most US officials, either Mr. Gates did not want to mention it or he is simply not aware of it.  Mehsud was an anti-Pakistan terrorist and not an anti-US terrorist.  There is no evidence that he posed any threat to the US occupation forces in Afghanistan.  He introduced ruthless methods of terrorism in Pakistan that were unknown here and more common to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  Interestingly, these methods of terror arrived in Pakistan shortly after the arrival of the American military-intelligence setup in Afghanistan. We have reason to believe this was not just the function of American soldiers attracting Iraqi suicide bombers and trainers all the way to Afghanistan.  That claim remains unverifiable at best, and is self-serving.

Considering Baitullah Mehsud’s base of operations, geographically and logistically the only source of money and weapons to sustain his anti-Pakistan war was American-controlled Afghanistan.  His fighters fought Pakistan with American dollars and American weapons.  The drug money in Afghanistan increased manifold under the US military.  The people involved in this trade were and continue to be hardcore US allies in Afghanistan and part of the US puppet regime in Kabul.

Washington used Pakistan to help occupy Afghanistan.  Once done, America turned its back to Pakistan and gradually turned Afghanistan into a hub for anti-Pakistan forces, from Northern Alliance warlords, Indian intelligence operatives to Pakistan-averse US military and intelligence officers.

There is little reason to believe that President Obama has weaned America off the policy of regional destabilization and adventurism that the Bush-Cheney combine pursued in Afghanistan. Let me show you a quick list of the mess that we believe has its origins in US-occupied Afghanistan:

1.  Systematic and cruel methods of targeting innocent civilians by shadowy terrorists meant to spread fear and instability:  This manifested itself inside Pakistan in deliberate cutting of hands and feet and throat slitting, photographing the acts and then sending them to newspaper offices and posting them online.  The victims were innocent Pakistanis. This terror achieved no specific goal except spreading fear and chaos, all the hallmarks of proxy wars.

2.  Secret organizations backed by CIA that claim representation of Balochis:   In Pakistan the separatist BLA, a proxy created by the Soviet Union, rose from the dead in 2005; while in Iran a different Baloch group was created with a Sunni composition to spark a Shia-Sunni conflict in Iran.  Of course, the Balochis, whether in Iran or Pakistan, never had anything to do with both groups.

3.  Attempts were made to spark region-wide Shia-Sunni conflict to parallel the sectarian killing fields in America’s Iraq.  Shia-Sunni tensions went up from Lebanon to Yemen.  This created a sectarian polarization favorable to an American war against Iran with the support of the Arab countries along with Pakistan, Turkey and Afghanistan.  It is another story that this sectarian strife failed to catch up.

4. In Pakistan, Washington managed to install a government of its liking without a war or invasion by manipulating an insecure and shortsighted Pervez Musharraf.  The result is probably the most inept and corrupt government in the modern history of the country.  This pro-US government could also prove fatal for the nation’s long-term stability because of its inability to govern and because of its foreign [read: American-British] linked loyalties and interests.

For five long years, from 2004 to 2009, Pakistanis accepted the growing mess in the region as a byproduct of extremism, terrorism, Taliban, al Qaeda or whatever name America’s ‘terrorism industry’ chose to give to this mess.  But as they emerged from the mess, Pakistanis put the individual pieces of evidence in their hands together to discover that someone in Afghanistan was actively shifting the war to Pakistan.  This is when the entire Am-Brit media began demonizing Pakistan as the world’s next Iraq, spreading a fake global alarm over its well-developed nuclear and strategic arsenal using silly scenarios and releasing planted stories warning the world of the impending need for invading Pakistan.

Pakistanis also collected enough evidence that confirmed how a US-controlled Afghanistan was allowed by someone in Washington to be used to create and direct insurgencies and rebellions inside Pakistan.  In other words, create and nurture terrorism and instability inside Pakistan. Some lobbies within either Pentagon or the CIA, or both, were involved in this act of covert aggression against Pakistan, with the connivance of India and Kabul’s American puppet regime.

HOW THE AMERICAN DUPLICITY WAS CHECKED

Four factors changed the regional scene in the past few months:

1.       Pakistan’s Military:  The GHQ in Rawalpindi put its foot down on the question of Indian use of Afghan soil to export terror to Pakistan and the many signs that the CIA was protecting some of the anti-Pakistan terrorists inside Pakistan’s tribal belt.  A clear message was conveyed from Rawalpindi to Tampa: Stop it or lose the Pakistan supply route for NATO and US military in Afghanistan.

2.      The global economic meltdown.

3.      The change of guard in Washington.

4.      The growing failure of the American occupation of Afghanistan and the panic this created inside a new administration in Washington.

Over the past thirteen months, Baitullah Mehsud’s activities and his bottomless Afghan supply lines became a bone of contention between Pakistan and the United States, starting from a July 2008 meeting in Rawalpindi between Pakistani and American military and intelligence commanders.  In this meeting, the CIA or elements within it were accused directly of supporting terrorism inside Pakistan and deviating from the stated US government policy.  The incumbent Pakistan army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani was present in this meeting.

It is interesting how the mainstream American media refuses to cover this side of the story of terrorism inside Pakistan.  In June, one of Baitullah’s former senior aides, Qari Zainuddin Mehsud, held a press conference attended by the Pakistani and international media where he accused Baitullah’s terror army of receiving support from Americans and Indians inside Afghanistan.  He was killed while asleep within a week in a stealth attack by an assassin.

So, why did CIA drones attack Baitullah Mehsud this time?

After the July 2008 meeting, CIA dragged its feet over Baitullah Mehsud.  The Pakistani government was too weak and too indebted to Washington to raise this issue and India’s terror outposts in Afghanistan.  It was the military-to-military channel between Islamabad and Washington that helped break the deadlock.  This is how William Burns was sent to New Delhi in June to ask India to stand down in Afghanistan.  Around the same time, CIA began sending drones to Baitullah’s territory. So should we in Pakistan be grateful to CIA, its drones, and to the United States for eliminating Baitullah Mehsud?  Hardly. Our problems will persist as long as the unjust and mismanaged Afghan occupation continues, with Washington ignoring Pakistan’s vital security and strategic interests in the region and focusing only on its own.

IMPERIAL US EMABSSY?

What is stunning is how the elected Pakistani government is sanctioning the construction of probably the largest US embassy in the world in Islamabad.  Just in the past two weeks, there have been several incidents of US diplomats carrying loaded weapons in public inside the Pakistani capital.  In one incident a US diplomat carrying a weapon manhandled a Pakistani police officer outside the US embassy compound.  The diplomat reportedly cursed the country that is hosting him.  After some unnamed government officials suggested the diplomat might be deported, the whole story died down.  The expansion work underway at the fortified embassy suggests that a military base of some sort is under construction, with sleeping barracks for hundreds of people.

Pakistan is not Iraq or Afghanistan under US occupation.  So regardless of the silence of both President Asif Zardari and the supposed opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, who both are looking to Washington to accumulate power, strong resentment is brewing against this imperial American construction in the heart of the Pakistani capital. Pakistan’s core contention with the US persists:  how the US turned Afghanistan into a hub for anti-Pakistan forces from within and outside the region.  US-occupied Afghanistan is a source of destabilizing Pakistan, China, Iran and Russia. Washington has become more sensitive to Islamabad recently because of the factors discussed above.  But Pakistanis have little reason to believe that this American change of heart is little more than the result of the difficult circumstances.

Source: Ahmed Quraishi

Fighting the Corrupt Journalists in Pakistan

Not surprisingly life in the Land of the Pure is a lot more muddled!

Many of the top journalists have been bought out by the State, using

the office of the Press Information Department which is an arm of the

Ministry of “Information”.

Many of their lesser known colleagues get away with low level

blackmailing.

We have highlighted recently the land deals for Nazir Naji, Rauf

Klasra and Mohammad Malick and the dangerous ideological affiliations

(pro-Taliban) of superstars like Kamran Khan, Hamid Mir and Ansar

Abbasiwho have since the Ch Iftikhar upheaval become the darlings of

the couch-potato public through their TV appearances.

And there is the lovely Amir Liaquat who wows the ladies with his Alim

Online, while everyone knows about him hoodwinking the public about

his fake degrees.  The ignorance spread by such religious programs

anchored by crooks becomes difficult to counter by the saner elements

in society.

What common between these guys?

They all belong to the Jang group which is led by Mir Shakeel ur

Rahman and Bros.

The Jang group is faithfully supported by the likes of Shaheen Sehbai

and Imran Aslam and other editors who pretty much keep mum while the

Jang group rolls in the millions from advertising revenue.

It is therefore important that those interested in fair reporting in

Pakistan carefully consider the following survey report.  Note the

names of Geo and Jang:

The National Corruption Perception Survey 2009 (NCPS 2009) indicates

that the overall Corruption in 2002 has increased from Rs 45 Billion

to Rs 195 Billion in 2009.

To the question “In your opinion has media played a positive role in

combating corruption, 77% said yes.

Respondents ranking of four most viewed TV Channel are Geo, ARY,

Express and Aaj.

Four News paper in readership ranking are Jang, Nawae Waqat, Dawn and

Mashriq.

WE WISH TO SET A CHALLENGE FOR JOURNALISTS AND MANAGEMENT OF ARY,

EXPRESS AND AAJ AS WELL AS NAWAE WAKT, DAWN AND MASHRIQ TO DO

INVESTIGATIVE STORIES ABOUT THE DARK SHEEP IN THEIR PROFESSION.

IT IS TOO EASY TO THROW DIRT ON OTHERS; ONLY WHEN JOURNALISTS CAN

INVESTIGATE THEIR PEERS WILL THEY RESTORE THEIR TRUST WITH THE PUBLIC.

OUR HOPES FOCUS ON THE YOUNGER UNTAINTED LOT OF YOUNG REPORTERS AND

JOURNALISTS TO EXPOSE THE ROT THROUGH BLOGS AND LISTS.

BECAUSE IT IS NEAR-IMPOSSIBLE FOR THE REGULAR MEDIA CHANNELS TO TAKE

THIS UP.

WE ALSO APPEAL TO THE ETHICS COMMITTEE (OR EQUIVALENT) OF THE NATIONAL

JOURNALISTS’ UNION TO PROBE THIS MATTER AND PUNISH THOSE WHO ARE

GUILTY AND TO LAY DOWN GUIDELINES TO REDUCE THE CHANCES OF CORRUPTION

IN THEIR MIDST.

If you agree with the above, please forward this message to your

friends so that we jointly push for clean, trustworthy journalism in

Pakistan.

Syed Inam Alavi, Ph.D.

Columbia Journalism School, NYC,

(For Yellow Journalism Watch)

Not surprisingly life in the Land of the Pure is a lot more muddled!

Many of the top journalists have been bought out by the State, using the office of the Press Information Department which is an arm of the Ministry of “Information”. Many of their lesser known colleagues get away with low level

blackmailing.

We have highlighted recently the land deals for Nazir Naji, Rauf Klasra and Mohammad Malick and the dangerous ideological affiliations (pro-Taliban) of superstars like Kamran Khan, Hamid Mir and Ansar Abbasiwho have since the Ch Iftikhar upheaval become the darlings of the couch-potato public through their TV appearances.

And there is the lovely Amir Liaquat who wows the ladies with his Alim Online, while everyone knows about him hoodwinking the public about his fake degrees.  The ignorance spread by such religious programs anchored by crooks becomes difficult to counter by the saner elements in society.

What common between these guys?

They all belong to the Jang group which is led by Mir Shakeel ur Rahman and Bros.

The Jang group is faithfully supported by the likes of Shaheen Sehbai and Imran Aslam and other editors who pretty much keep mum while the Jang group rolls in the millions from advertising revenue. It is therefore important that those interested in fair reporting in Pakistan carefully consider the following survey report.  Note the names of Geo and Jang:

The National Corruption Perception Survey 2009 (NCPS 2009) indicates that the overall Corruption in 2002 has increased from Rs 45 Billion to Rs 195 Billion in 2009.

To the question “In your opinion has media played a positive role in combating corruption, 77% said yes. Respondents ranking of four most viewed TV Channel are Geo, ARY, Express and Aaj. Four News paper in readership ranking are Jang, Nawae Waqat, Dawn and Mashriq.

WE WISH TO SET A CHALLENGE FOR JOURNALISTS AND MANAGEMENT OF ARY,

EXPRESS AND AAJ AS WELL AS NAWAE WAKT, DAWN AND MASHRIQ TO DO

INVESTIGATIVE STORIES ABOUT THE DARK SHEEP IN THEIR PROFESSION.

IT IS TOO EASY TO THROW DIRT ON OTHERS; ONLY WHEN JOURNALISTS CAN

INVESTIGATE THEIR PEERS WILL THEY RESTORE THEIR TRUST WITH THE PUBLIC.

OUR HOPES FOCUS ON THE YOUNGER UNTAINTED LOT OF YOUNG REPORTERS AND

JOURNALISTS TO EXPOSE THE ROT THROUGH BLOGS AND LISTS.

BECAUSE IT IS NEAR-IMPOSSIBLE FOR THE REGULAR MEDIA CHANNELS TO TAKE

THIS UP.

WE ALSO APPEAL TO THE ETHICS COMMITTEE (OR EQUIVALENT) OF THE NATIONAL

JOURNALISTS’ UNION TO PROBE THIS MATTER AND PUNISH THOSE WHO ARE

GUILTY AND TO LAY DOWN GUIDELINES TO REDUCE THE CHANCES OF CORRUPTION

IN THEIR MIDST.

If you agree with the above, please forward this message to your friends so that we jointly push for clean, trustworthy journalism in Pakistan.

Syed Inam Alavi, Ph.D.

Columbia Journalism School, NYC,

(For Yellow Journalism Watch)