Our sectarian divide

By: Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg

The sectarian divide of the Muslim World has been the cause of serious conflicts in the past, and continues to have its toll, particularly for the last thirty years, with external forces exploiting this weakness. The countries which have suffered most are Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Palestine’ Lebanon and Pakistan, and the one being targeted now, is Bahrain, from where the New Great Game begins.

On a larger canvas, one would find that, during the last thirty years, sectarianism has grow into “two centers of power”, namely the Pakhtun Power and the Shia Power, determining the security parameters of the entire Asian region. These ‘centers of power’ can be called, the Sectarian Tectonic Plates, which could shake the world peace if they collide and if they collude, a new era of peace and unity would emerge.

These centers of power, have grown out of the great turmoil caused by contrived wars and conflicts in the region, through interventions, state-sponsored terrorism, contrived conflicts, such as the occupation of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union in 1980; the eight years war of liberation by the Afghans from 1980 to 88; the eight years Iran-Iraq war from 1980-88); the first Gulf War of 1991; the nine years civil war in Afghanistan from 1992-2001; invasion and occupation of Afghanistan by USA and allies in 2001-2011; invasion and occupation of Iraq by USA in 2003-2011; Israeli war on Lebanon in 2006 and the on-going brutal wars in Palestine and Kashmir. As a result, more than six million Muslims have died and many more millions seriously wounded, maimed and decapitated – a brutality, which ironically has earned the title of ‘terrorists’ for the brutalized and the oppressors call themselves the ‘messengers of peace.’ As a reaction to this state- sponsored terrorism, the Islamic Global Resistance grew to contain and curb the menace, and turned into a movement, which has lasted for almost thirty years, giving birth to Pakhtun and Shia Powers.

The Pakhtun Power. The hard core of this power base is in the Pakhtun belt, along the Pak-Afghan borders, with 240 millions of Pakhtuns living in Pakistan and 170 millions in Afghanistan. Its area of influence extends from Karachi with four million Pakhtuns, to the line of Hindukush. It has developed into a formidable base for the “Islamic Resistance, which draws “support of the freedom fighters from seventy countries of the world.” During the last thirty years, it has defeated two super powers, and NATO. The defeated powers, therefore, are now planning “to contain and curb the Pakhtun Power, the greatest threat to US interests in the region” – David Kilkullen, Security Advisor to the former US President. This purpose can be achieved by making the two powers collide with each other.

The Shia Power extends from Iran to Iraq, to Bahrain and to Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Pakistan, where significant Shia minority resides. The Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88, was contrived to create hatred between the Shias and the Sunnis. Iraq has since been occupied and defeated, but Iran is defiant and is being demonized as a threat for the Sunni countries in the region, who out of fear are arming themselves against Iran and have bought military hardware worth over 150xbillion dollars from USA, during the last seven years. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, GCC countries and Jordan are the main recipients of the military hardware, and are preparing themselves to fight the so called Shia threat.

Bahrain, which is a Shia majority country, and is ruled by the Sunni minority, is facing intervention by Saudi and GCC armed forces, under the watchful eyes of the West, as part of the Gulf countries Joint Peninsula Shield Force. Iran calls it as “invasion by an army of occupation,” while the United States has declared that the “entry of foreign troops was not an invasion.” The Shia led protests seeking to break the 200 years old Sunni rule in Bahrain, and military intervention by the neighbouring Sunni countries marks the unfolding of the conspiracy to make the Sunni and Shia countries collide, whereas during the past thirty years, sectarian riots were induced in Iraq and Pakistan and now “the nations are being pitched against each other.” It is the beginning of the New Great Game, to damage the unity of the Muslim World.

The US intelligence agencies operating in Pakistan and Afghanistan are hand-in-glove with the Indian and European intelligence agencies in Afghanistan since 2004, and have been able to turn the Afghan war on Pakistan. Pakistan military thus is engaged in a running battle against its own Pakhtun tribes. Additionally, more than hundred thousand troops are deployed on the Pak-Afghan borders, in support of the American and coalition forces in Afghanistan. In fact, Pakistan has unwittingly become a party to the crime, for defeat and destruction of the Pakhtun Power, which is the name of the New Great Game of the competing powers in the region. Both, the Pakhtun Power and Shia Power, are a significant element of our national power and must be harnessed to enhance our national security at this very critical moment in history, when a strong wind of change is sweeping the Muslim World. In Pakistan, we already have a burning problem in Parachinar, Kurram Agency, due to involvement of the neighbouring countries with so much of blood letting there, since the occupation of Afghanistan in 2001 by foreign powers. It is a dangerous trend, so clearly visible now in Bahrain, where the Saudi and GCC countries have entered to support the Sunni ruler with full blessings of the West. These are very ominous signs, making the Sectarian Tectonic Plates collide and damage the prospects of unity of the Muslim World.

The revolutionary upsurge in the Arab World, demands democratic freedom and social justice and equally ignites the Pakistani mind. Fortunately we have a democratic rule in Pakistan, which can deliver social justice and civil liberties, despite all the faults of the present system. We have to give it a chance to correct itself. We need political peace and stability, which will come if we show patience. And the best to happen to our national security, would be, the departure of the occupation forces from Afghanistan – the Mother of All Evil.

Pakistan thus stands at the choice point to experiment democratic governance, unpolluted and free from foreign intrusions and intrigues. Sectarian divide is a great weakness, which can be overcome democratically, through political wisdom. Also awareness is fast developing in the Muslim society about the negative impacts/consequences of sectarianism.

Kicked Ass & Ass Kicked

By Ahsan Waheed
ZoneAsia-Pk

It is well documented that like a fluorescent lamp former President Bush’s brain took time to light up and comprehend what he was being told after the 911 attacks. Bush who was reading a story about goats (or was it apes?) to some children at that time explains the delay to the boiling rage that engulfed him and spawned an uncontrollable desire to ‘kick ass’. This ass kicking urge was the conceptual basis for the strategy that put American kids first in Afghanistan and then Iraq where thousands have been killed, maimed and turned into basket mental cases. Of course while ‘kicking ass’ they have had their own ass thoroughly kicked and the process continues. Recently a media report indicated that the Taliban have welcomed the US Department of Defense decision to let all the gays in the military out of the closet ending the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy that kept a fig leaf over their activities. The Taliban in Afghanistan have launched ‘Operation White Ass’ as a response to the new US military policy —this operation as nothing to do with donkeys.

Read Complete Article Here: http://www.zoneasia-pk.com/ZoneAsia-Pk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3536:qkicking-assq-and-getting-kicked&catid=70:free-talk&Itemid=84

Seymour Hersh Unleashed

By Blake Hounshell

DOHA, Qatar-David Remnick, call your office.

In a speech billed as a discussion of the Bush and Obama eras, New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh delivered a rambling, conspiracy-laden diatribe here Monday expressing his disappointment with President Barack Obama and his dissatisfaction with the direction of U.S. foreign policy.

“Just when we needed an angry black man,” he began, his arm perched jauntily on the podium, “we didn’t get one.”

It quickly went downhill from there.

Hersh, whose exposés of gross abuses by members of the U.S. military in Vietnam and Iraq have earned him worldwide fame and high journalistic honors, said he was writing a book on what he called the “Cheney-Bush years” and saw little difference between that period and the Obama administration.

He said that he was keeping a “checklist” of aggressive U.S. policies that remained in place, including torture and “rendition” of terrorist suspects to allied countries, which he alleged was ongoing.

He also charged that U.S. foreign policy had been hijacked by a cabal of neoconservative “crusaders” in the former vice president’s office and now in the special operations community.

“What I’m really talking about is how eight or nine neoconservative, radicals* if you will, overthrew the American government. Took it over,” he said of his forthcoming book. “It’s not only that the neocons took it over but how easily they did it — how Congress disappeared, how the press became part of it, how the public acquiesced.”

Hersh then brought up the widespread looting that took place in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. “In the Cheney shop, the attitude was, ‘What’s this? What are they all worried about, the politicians and the press, they’re all worried about some looting? … Don’t they get it? We’re gonna change mosques into cathedrals. And when we get all the oil, nobody’s gonna give a damn.’”

“That’s the attitude,” he continued. “We’re gonna change mosques into cathedrals. That’s an attitude that pervades, I’m here to say, a large percentage of the Joint Special Operations Command.”

He then alleged that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who headed JSOC before briefly becoming the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and his successor, Vice Adm. William McRaven, as well as many within JSOC, “are all members of, or at least supporters of, Knights of Malta.”

Hersh may have been referring to the Sovereign Order of Malta, a Roman Catholic organization commited to “defence of the Faith and assistance to the poor and the suffering,” according to its website.

“Many of them are members of Opus Dei,” Hersh continued. “They do see what they’re doing — and this is not an atypical attitude among some military — it’s a crusade, literally. They see themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They’re protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function.”

“They have little insignias, these coins they pass among each other, which are crusader coins,” he continued. “They have insignia that reflect the whole notion that this is a culture war. … Right now, there’s a tremendous, tremendous amount of anti-Muslim feeling in the military community.”

Hersh relayed that he had recently spoken with “a man in the intelligence community… somebody in the joint special operations business” about the downfall of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia. “He said, ‘Oh my God, he was such a good ally.’”

“Tunisia’s going to change the game,” Hersh added later. “It’s going to scare the hell out of a lot of people.”

Moving to Pakistan, where Hersh noted he had been friendly with Benazir Bhutto, the journalist told of a dinner meeting with Asif Ali Zardari, the late prime minister’s husband, in which Hersh said the Pakistani president was brutally disdainful of his own people.

Hersh described a trip he made to Swat, where the Pakistani military had just dislodged Taliban insurgents who had taken over the scenic valley, a traditional vacation area for the urban middle class. Hersh said he asked Zardari about the tent cities he saw along the road, where people were living in harsh, unsanitary conditions.

“Well, those people there in Swat, that’s what they deserve,” the Pakistani president replied, according to Hersh. Asked why, Hersh said Zardari responded, “Because they supported the Taliban.” (Note: Hersh’s conversation is not recounted in his 2009 New Yorker article on Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, presumably because it coudn’t be verified.)

The veteran journalist also alleged that the CIA station chief in Islamabad, who was recently recalled after his name surfaced in Pakistani court documents and in the lively Pakistani press, had actually been fired for disputing the plans of Gen. David Petraeus, who took over the Afghan war last summer after General McChrystal was summarily dismissed.

“When Petraeus issued a very optimistic report about the war in December that he gave to the president,” Hersh said, the station chief “just declared it was bankrupt… internally. He just said ‘This is completely wrongheaded. The policy’s wrongheaded.’ Off he goes. Out he goes.”

“I’ve given up being disillusioned about the CIA,” Hersh said. “They’re trained to lie, period. They will lie to their president, they will lie certainly to the Congress, and they will lie to the American people. That’s all there is to it.”

Hersh was speaking on the invitation of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, which operates a branch campus in Qatar.

Case of Accused Soldiers May Be Worst of 2 Wars

By CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON – Over the last nine years, as the Army has cycled hundreds of thousands of soldiers through combat duty in Afghanistan and Iraq, it has also court-martialed 34 on murder or manslaughter charges in the killings of civilians in those conflict zones. Twenty-two were convicted, and 12 acquitted.

Some cases gained a measure of notoriety, including a rape and multiple killing in Iraq in 2006 that resulted in lengthy sentences for several soldiers. The Marine Corps, too, has dealt with high-profile cases, like the killing by Marines in 2005 of 24 Iraqis in Haditha – though prosecution efforts in that case largely collapsed.

But a case being heard before a military court at Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Seattle could surpass all that have come before in the two wars: an investigation into accusations that a drug-addled Army unit formed a secret self-described “kill team” that repeatedly killed Afghan civilians for sport, posing for pictures with victims and taking body parts as trophies.

The particularly chilling and gruesome details of the accusations make the case different in many ways from the broader universe of publicly known civilian killings in Iraq and Afghanistan, said military law specialists and human rights advocates who track such killings.

“This is a magnitude escalation above anything that has ever happened before” in Afghanistan or Iraq, said Thomas J. Romig, a retired major general who oversaw the Army’s court-martial system as judge advocate general from 2001 to 2005.

The majority of civilian-killing cases that have arisen until now have been connected to combat in some way: soldiers accused of using excessive force or firing indiscriminately when responding to an attack, or who killed prisoners shortly after a bombing or a firefight, when emotions were still raging.

The Haditha killings, for example, followed a bombing that killed one Marine and severely injured two others. Several defendants later claimed that they were shot at after the blast. (Though most of the case collapsed, one defendant still faces a trial on manslaughter charges.)

Similarly, in 2008, the military decided not to bring charges against two Marines who commanded a unit accused of indiscriminately firing on vehicles and pedestrians along a 10-mile stretch of road in Afghanistan. The shootings began after a suicide bomber attacked the unit’s convoy.

An Army investigation later concluded that 19 people were killed and 50 were injured. But the Marines said they had taken hostile gunfire after the explosion and had fired to defend themselves from perceived threats. The case was closed without any prosecution.

It can be difficult to win a conviction, specialists in military law said, when defendants can make a plausible claim that they believed, in the confusion of the “fog of war,” that their lives were in danger and they needed to defend themselves.

“You often see cases of kids who just make dumb decisions,” said Gary Solis, who teaches the laws of war at Georgetown University. “But killings in the heat of the moment, they don’t usually try those guys. The guys you try are the ones who have an opportunity to consider what they are doing.”

Last year, for example, five Army soldiers were convicted or pleaded guilty to charges related to the killings of four blindfolded and handcuffed detainees. The victims were shot in the back of the head and dumped into a Baghdad canal in 2007.

In that case, the soldiers had captured the prisoners shortly after somebody had shot at the soldiers. They were frustrated because they believed their prisoners were insurgents who would be released because the evidence against them was deemed to be too weak.

The accusations in the most recent case are even further removed from the high emotions of combat. In a videotaped interrogation that was leaked to the news media, one defendant said that they would kill civilians without provocation after making it seem as if they were under attack.

Military investigators and prosecutors have faced challenges in assembling evidence in conflict zones, said Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military law at Yale Law School. In many cases, he said, months have passed by the time an accusation surfaces, and so units have rotated back from the tour of duty, records are poor, and it is difficult to find witnesses.

Moreover, in the Muslim world investigators are deeply reluctant, for cultural reasons, to exhume bodies and perform autopsies. Still, he noted, in some cases troops have taken digital photographs recording their deeds. (Both factors are present in the most recent case.)

Several military lawyers and human rights groups said that of all the known cases that have previously arisen in Iraq and Afghanistan, the current matter most closely resembles a gang-rape and murder in Mahmudiya, Iraq, in 2006.

In that case, soldiers raped a 14-year-old girl and killed her and her family, then set their house on fire. Like the accusations in the current Afghan case, that incident was unconnected to combat: the family lived near a checkpoint staffed by the unit, which conspired ahead of time to undertake the assault and blame insurgents, the trial showed.

By the time that rape and killings came to light, one of the soldiers had already been discharged from the Army. He was tried in civilian court and received life without parole, while several others were convicted in a court-martial and received sentences of 90 and 100 years.

Still, the ability to compare and contrast the present case with others has limits, Mr. Romig and several human rights groups said. It cannot be known whether other questionable civilian killings failed to come to light. Moreover, because the military justice system is decentralized, there is little comprehensive information available about its investigations.

The Marine Corps, for example, was unable to provide numbers about prosecutions and acquittals of its service members for killing civilians in the two wars. The numbers supplied by the Army for its murder and manslaughter cases do not cover other incidents that were labeled with a lesser charge, like negligent homicide or aggravated assault – nor those punished administratively with reprimands.

And many civilian deaths have arisen in contexts – like shootings of cars that failed to stop as they approached checkpoints – that rarely result in criminal charges or any public records.

“The large majority of civilian harm in both Iraq and Afghanistan takes place during legitimate military operations,” said Sarah Holewinksi, executive director of the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict. “But because of very poor record keeping on the part of all the warring parties, we really don’t know who has been harmed, how many have been harmed and how they have been harmed.”

Aafia Siddiqui Sentenced: A Grievous Miscarriage of Justice

By Stephen Lendman

On September 23 in federal court, US District Court Judge Richard Berman sentenced political prisoner Aafia Siddiqui to 86 years in prison. Outrage most accurately expresses this gross miscarriage of justice, compounding what she’s already endured following her March 30, 2003 abduction, imprisonment, torture, prosecution, and conviction on bogus charges.

Earlier articles explained her case in detail, accessed through the following links:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2008/12/abduction-secret-detention-torture-and.html
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/02/aafia-siddiqui-victimized-by-american.html
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/03/aafia-siddiqui-victimized-by-american.html

In modern times, she’s one of American depravity’s most aggrieved victims, now given a virtual life sentence for a crime she didn’t and couldn’t have committed, explained in the above articles.

In recent months, she’s been in New York’s Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in maximum security solitary confinement, during her trial, conviction and September 23 sentencing. Importantly, her life was effectively destroyed by years of horrific tortures, repeated rapings, and other abuses in Bagram Prison at America’s Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan.

Addressing the court, said said “I’m not paranoid. I’m not mentally ill. I don’t agree with” anyone saying so, though it’s hard imagining why not after years of horrific brutalization. A Pakistani/American scientist, years of torture and abuse destroyed her persona, yet somehow she survived and endured more stress from prosecution, a travesty of a trial, conviction and sentencing.

Reporting on the court’s decision, the BBC repeated government lies, including her possessing bomb making instructions to blow up New York landmarks – “evidence that she was a potentially dangerous terrorist.” Yet her indictment was on totally different charges – preposterous ones accusing her of the following:

In the presence of two FBI agents, two Army interpreters, and three US Army officers, this frail 110 pound woman allegedly assaulted three of them, seized one of their rifles, opened fire at close range, hit no one, yet she alone was severely wounded.

At trial, no credible evidence was presented. The charges were concocted and bogus. None accused her of plotting to blow up New York or any other landmarks or facilities.

Yet proceedings were carefully orchestrated. Witnesses were enlisted, pressured, coerced, and/or bribed to cooperate. Jurors were then intimidated to convict, her attorney Elaine Whitfield Sharp, saying their verdict was “based on fear, not fact.” No evidence was presented except claims government prosecutors invented to convict.

The International Tribune also highlighted today’s proceedings, headlining “Dr. Aafia sentenced to 86 years imprisonment,” saying:

It was on seven counts “for allegedly firing at US troops in Afghanistan.” After the announcement, protests erupted across Pakistan. In Karachi, civil society and political party workers rallied “in front of the Karachi Press Club….ask(ing) the federal government” to intervene on her behalf.

Jamaat-e-Islami, PASBAN, Defense of Human Rights, and other civil society members marched toward the US Embassy, expressing outrage and demanding she be released “as a goodwill gesture.”

“Advisor to Sindh Chief Minister Ms. Sharmila Farooqui asked the United States to release (her) on humanitarian (grounds) as a goodwill gesture to Pakistan….Now is the time for the US to show goodness and pardon a Pakistani woman who is innocent.”

Farooqui said Aafia was wrongly abducted, then handed over to US authorities. She’s “an innocent woman,” outrageously treated, convicted and sentenced.

Explaining further she said:

“In Islam and Pakistan, handing over a woman to foreign countries is a sin, but it is a pity that an innocent woman was mercilessly given in(to the) hands of the (previous) US” government.

She also urged international human rights organizations to actively pursue her release.

A Final Comment

At issue is 9/11 truth, the subsequent bogus “war on terror” based on a lie, America’s war on Islam that followed against Iraq, Afghanistan, and Muslim Americans, victimized for political advantage. Aafia is perhaps its most aggrieved living victim, her persona destroyed and life ended by a virtual life sentence unless clemency or world pressure saves her.

Her case should incite everyone’s moral outrage. It also reveals America’s true face, its rogue agenda, targeting Muslims for their faith and ethnicity, making us all equally vulnerable.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com

America’s Men In Pakistan

In his latest write up for BBC, Pentagon adviser Ahmed Rashid proposes putting Pakistan under an international trusteeship. Too bad he forgot that Pakistan is not under US or NATO occupation. Ahmed Rashid leads the pack of pro-US and pro-UK activists in Pakistan, whose work is tailored to please a foreign audience. But he is not alone. There is Dr. Hafeez Shaikh and Dr. Nadeem ul Haq, Pakistan’s key economic managers. The United States does not need to invade and occupy Pakistan and execute a regime-change like it did in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Pakistan, Washington is using apologists in politics, media and intelligentsia who are willing accomplices without Washington having to fire a single bullet.

By Shireen M. Mazari
The Nation
WWW.PAKNATIONALISTS.COM

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The more one observes the Pakistan-US relationship, the more one realizes that to understand fully its multiple dimensions, one really needs to look at it through a Gramscian [Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci] framework of hegemony where the hegemon has so entrenched its value system in the ruling elite of the subservient nation that it does not need to exercise the use of force or brute power. In other words, it has established its hegemony, which Gramsci distinguishes from power through use of force – to explain the depth of Gramscian thought in a simplistic but comprehensible fashion. That is, the ruling elite imbibe the value system of the hegemon – in this case the US – as its own and relate to it, rather than to its own indigenous influences and realities. Aiding and abetting this external value system’s adoption are of course the “organic intellectuals” in the Gramscian sense, who are linked to the ruling class and have to be won over by the hegemon since it is this group in a society that create an awareness not only of a class’s functions in the economic sense, but also in the social and political fields. But an even more important group of “intellectuals” are the “traditional intellectuals” who claim to be autonomous and independent of any class in society, including the ruling class but are not always so. If one now examines the extensive definition of intellectuals by Gramsci, it includes not just those who think in society – which he says everyone does – but who have “the function of intellectuals” and included in this are business managers, media persons, researchers, engineers, politicians and so on.

In Pakistan today, one can see a range of these groups of intellectuals – both organic and traditional – who are increasingly being co-opted by the external hegemon, the US, as it pours money into the media and other sections of civil society.

Leading the field in the co-opted intellectuals one can identify the likes of Ahmed Rashid who now specifically writes what the West wants to hear and his latest piece for the BBC as a guest columnist practically suggests handing over Pakistan and its governance to foreign technocrats controlled by the US. It is no wonder the US government is using him as an adviser for this region – but unfortunately he is totally out of synch with the ground realities of Pakistan and its people; or he would have realized how such ideas will not gel in Pakistan just as the US-loyal intellectuals are finding few takers within the nation as a whole.

However, the problem for us is that the US is willing to accept the bizarre advice of people like Rashid and act on it – thereby causing more damage to Pakistan. After all, we already have some of these people in key economic decision-making roles from Dr Hafeez Shaikh to Dr. Nadeem ul Haq in the Planning Commission – all with strong links to the US and IMF. But that is not enough for Rashid who suggests in the column on the BBC website that foreign technocrats should take over our economic and, clearly linked to that, political decision-making. Now how “foreign” these technocrats should be is not specified given how Shaikh and Haq by any definition are foreign enough in terms of linkages and time spent abroad as well as assets abroad – and we are not too sure about dual nationalities!

Anyhow, Rashid has suggested that a Pakistan Reconstruction Trust Fund be set up like the one operating in Afghanistan, especially to fund the government, army and police! Such a fund would not just monitor the “cash” but also “help” (in other words dictate) a supposedly “non-political neutral” reconstruction effort. Oh the phrase “non-political and neutral” which used to denote a pretext for military non-democratic rule at one time! Now we are seeing it to justify Neoimperialism. While the floods are the pretext for justifying such a move, the real agenda is clearly that of the IMF and World Bank because according to Rashid, such a body would also plan long-term economic reforms including future taxes

Too bad Rashid has forgotten that Pakistan is not under US or NATO occupation, although judging from his earlier advice he may be wishing it were! To make this suggestion more acceptable he has advocated that “neutral” Pakistani technocrats should be included and of course where else can these be found but in the “NGO workers” for one! The fact is that in any social science field where there are value judgments, nothing is “neutral”. Clearly just as the British colonialists co-opted Indians into their running of British India, Rashid has the same idea for the neoimperialist masters of his – the US! The British colonists also felt they were more efficient than the Indian rulers – and perhaps they were considering that India’s Muslim rulers, the precursors to Pakistan, were in a decline after centuries in government – but the cost of this efficiency was colonization.

This is not to deny the sorry state of governance and the rampant corruption in the Pakistani state today but we have the capacity and capability to bring about change through our own resources and hopefully through democratic means. Incidentally, Rashid also continues to beat the bogey of the threat of “Islamic extremism” which has certainly served him well! Rashid tries to draw a parallel between the 1971 cyclone in what was then East Pakistan; but the fact is that the crisis there had begun way before the cyclone and secessionist forces and the ruling elite’s political obduracy were already on a collision course which was aggravated by the cyclone. This is not to say that things are not disastrous today as we look around a flood ravaged national landscape and an inept and corrupt government. But there are signs of hope also from the money pouring in from Pakistanis and private external donors to non-government sources as well as the exemplary relief work being done by the three Services (regardless of their other shortcomings). Pakistanis will reconstruct again – of this Rashid should have no doubts. Also, many Pakistanis are also seeing the floods as a wake-up call to restructure and reform their government and state institutions, but again not through the option of external rule and colonization. So there is a new political awakening; but the challenge is to bring change while strengthening democracy not accepting colonization.

Not that the US needs to colonize us overtly since it is already more than halfway there with a growing injection of money into the media and with its private and official covert operatives all over the country and in some of our sensitive air bases and other military outfits. In fact, the extent of the US presence in Pakistan is unknown but can be felt and seen to be extensive. What Ahmed Rashid is seeking is to find a legitimate way to make it all overt and therefore more legitimate. After all, as an organic intellectual of the hegemon he has to play his due role. But when will Pakistanis wake up and see this insidious agenda against the country?

This column was originally published in The Nation under the title, Apologists for US Imperialis. Reach Dr. Mazari at callstr@hotmail.com

When Will We See the Next Mass Murder?

By Jeff Gates

(Special to Opinion Maker) Here’s a news flash for Tel Aviv: it’s not a sign of respect when the bulk of humanity views you as psychopathic. Pakistan, in particular, should be concerned.

The concerns of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are misplaced. The legitimacy of Israel is no longer threatened. It’s already lost. Long gone. Kaput.

Nation states are shared states of mind. The mindset in Iceland differs from India. Israel is the most unlike of all. Founded by extremists and terrorists, it’s been downhill ever since.

Psychopaths want to be loved. That’s why they’re so charming, albeit only superficially. They’re also pathological liars, egocentric, callous and remorseless.

Those qualities have long been familiar to Israel’s neighbors, particularly the Palestinians. After WWII, Harry Truman was charmed into treating this extremist enclave as an ally.

That decision may well go down in history as America’s greatest mistake.

Though we’ve served for 62 years as Israel’s patron, pocketbook and apologist, the respect and affection has flowed in only one direction.

Psychopaths should not be confused with megalomaniacs. The mental states are quite different. Megalomaniacs seek to be feared, not loved. Control is the common trait.

That not-so-subtle distinction matters, at least for those of us who are not dual citizens.

For instance, it’s now known that Israel and its advocates fixed the intelligence that took us to war in Iraq. That fact is no longer in dispute.

That fact alone confirms the split personality evident in the shared state of mind we call Israel. Those who share that state charmed us into committing our blood and treasure for goals long sought by Israel. That’s the psychopath component.

The megalomaniac component felt they had a right to make us fearful. As Chosen (by a god of their own choosing), devotees of this shared mindset truly believe it’s their right to deceive. Those complicit see themselves as “of us but above us.”

When we dispatched our military to pursue their goals, Americans were killed and maimed as we borrowed our way into a fiscal morass from which there’s no clear route to recovery.

Score another victory for the U.S.-Israel special relationship.

Why Don’t Americans Get It?

Nothing about this “state” is legit. Never was. Its founding traces to a multi-decade reign of terror built on a phony historical foundation. Even the most dull-witted now question how Israel came into being. And why the U.S. ever deemed it special.

Americans are learning to fear Israel-as they should. A few of us remain charmed-despite the facts. For the True Believer, facts are likely to remain irrelevant.

Those familiar with the facts know better. Thus the fast-growing concern that troublesome behavior patterns are emerging once again.

Those most knowledgeable are deeply concerned about recent events.

On August 26th, a leaked memo from the Central Intelligence Agency cited American Jews as exporters of terrorism. Then came the news on August 30th from Sephardi chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef who urged that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas “vanish from our world” and that “God strike (Palestinians) down with a plague.”

Neither story gained traction in mainstream U.S. media. Instead, news coverage was reserved for August 31st when four Israelis were shot dead in the West Bank.

The most lethal attack in four years-blamed on Hamas-occurred just hours before Netanyahu’s scheduled meeting with Hamas leaders and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The timing revived memories of the many well-timed “incidents” during the reign of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. No one dares suggest that Tel Aviv may be the source of this latest incident. Yet consider just a few of the many precedents:

On April 12, 2002, at the same moment Secretary of State Colin Powell was meeting with Ariel Sharon, a suicide bombing occurred in Israel, killing 8 and injuring 22.

On May 10, 2002, at the same moment President Bush was meeting with Ariel Sharon, a suicide bombing occurred in Israel.

On June 11, 2003, on the same day Ariel Sharon visited the White House, a suicide bombing killed 17 and wounded 100 on a bus in Jerusalem.

On November 11, 2003, while the president of Italy was visiting the U.S., Italy suffered its greatest wartime casualties since WWII when 19 Italians were killed in Iraq.

On November 20, 2003, while President Bush was visiting Prime Minister Tony Blair in London, the British envoy to Istanbul was among 27 killed by a blast.

On November 30, 2003, while the president of Spain was visiting the U.S., seven Spanish intelligence officers were killed in Iraq.

The Source of Terror

What happens to Israel’s fast-fading legitimacy if the fear of terrorism-all of it-traces back to those long known for their expertise at waging war “by way of deception.” That’s the founding credo of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign operations directorate infamous for its worldwide expertise as an agent provocateur.

Would a state founded by terrorists resort to terror to sustain a narrative essential to its survival? Would Tel Aviv again deceive the U.S. to pursue its expansionist goals?

Zionist media mogul Haim Saban spoke candidly when, in the May 10th issue of The New Yorker, he boasted of “three ways to be influential in American politics:” make donations to political parties, establish think tanks and control media outlets.

His only omission: terror.

Was this dual citizen conceding how the U.S. was induced to war-for Israel?

Was he describing how Zionists shape U.S. policy-in plain sight?

Was he describing how psychopaths wage war on the U.S.-from within?

Was he divulging how megalomaniacs influence U.S. decision-making-with fear?

Americans have long been charmed by this “special” relationship. Now it’s time to be fearful. When a mental state of this malevolent sort becomes transparent and its operatives apparent, that’s when “psycho-megalomania” becomes its most dangerous.

Will we see another terrorist attack? You can bet on it. The only question is: When?

Special days are often chosen for special events. Will the next mass murder be on Rosh Hashanah (September 8th)? How about the ninth anniversary of September 11th? Or Yom Kippur on September 17th?

Will the next incident be nuclear or conventional? Will it be staged in the U.S. or the E.U.?

And most important of all: will it be blamed on Hezbollah or Hamas? Or will the “Pakistan Taliban” be portrayed as the requisite Evil Doer responsible for the next mass murder?

Stay tuned.

A Vietnam veteran, Jeff Gates is a widely acclaimed author, attorney, investment banker, educator and consultant to government, corporate and union leaders worldwide. He served for seven years as counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance. He is widely published in the trade, popular and academic press. His latest book is Guilt by Association: How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War. His previous books include Democracy at Risk: Rescuing Main Street From Wall Street and The Ownership Solution: Toward a Shared Capitalism for the 21st Century. Topical commentaries appear on the Criminal State website.

Israelization of Iraq and Indianization of Afghanistan

By Engr. Mansoor A. Malik in Opinion Maker

Rumsfeld’s Pentagon had novel ideas of their own. With people like Dick Cheney in the White House to oil his ego and his boss the President who knew only childhood cowboy’s tricks, had a free hand to think and act on his own. The somber and popular Secretary of State, Gen Collin Powell was made to look like a comedian in a Greek Tragedy Drama. The checks and balances which the US Congress had put in place after the Vietnam War debacle was conveniently set aside after the 9/11 fiasco and the Pentagon’s young Turks like Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and other likeminded skewed intellectuals in their Policy Planning committee was unleashed to the world in general and our world in particular.

The Babylonian Civilization of Iraq had to be taught new lessons in Democracy ala Israel to make it subservient to this so called shinning nuclear armor in the Nejaf Desert. But first and foremost, on occupation of this country, all the Babylonian artifacts had to be robbed and stolen to make this country free from its past. After this historic banditry, this country had to be de-stabilized from North-South and East-West in order to rebuild it on Democratic Topography of Shia-Sunni on one hand and Kurds-Turkmen on the other. The annihilation of Iraq was carried out thru the earnings of its Petro-dollars and the Israeli area of influence, courtesy Uncle Sam, spread from the Palestinian lands West of Jordan Valley to the Euphrates & Tigress Rivers of Babylon. Israel now had direct access to the two most important Muslim countries of the region i.e. Ottoman’s Turkey in the Northern fringes of Iraq and The Golden Bird, Iran on its Eastern flank. The re-drawing of the Middle-Eastern map to suit Israel was carried out in real earnest by Dum Dum Rumsfeld’s Pentagon. Before that it was Afghanistan’s turn in our midst.

The Shock and Awe of Mr. Rumsfeld’s War on Afghanistan was in full display for the whole world to see. The Daisy Cutters and heavy bombardment of B-52 bombers from the air on dilapidated mud houses in Afghanistan and on the ground the troops from the US Special Forces riding on horse backs and mules along with the Northern Alliance troops entering Kabul appeared to be projected out from the American Comical Characters of yore. The Lone Rangers had arrived in our neighborhood. Nine years down the line the Lone Rangers along with more than hundred thousand crack troops on the ground are still faced with stubborn resistance from the local inhabitants. The Indians caught up in the Kashmir quagmire over the last 60 years got their golden opportunity to jump into the American Bandwagon in Afghanistan to check mate Pakistan and divert the world attention from its own human atrocities in Kashmir. The singular most suffering country from The War on Terror in terms of men and material and lost opportunities, Pakistan was being painted differently by the Indians in cohort with the Israelis. The Indianization of Afghanistan may not be as smooth as Israelization of Iraq. The Indo-Israeli nexus had been working secretly for many years and had started showing their muscles openly after the 9/11 Tragedy. Such was their combined reach that they in turn started calling the shots at the Pentagon under the Tutelage of old, haggard and deranged Rumsfeld.

Earlier, the Israeli lobby with Uncle Sam’s blessings had penetrated the Dardanelle Straights of Turkey in order to establish their hold on the old champions of the Muslim World. Professor Erbakan, head of the Islamic Rifah Party in the early 1990s’ and an Opposition Leader in Turkey realized this onslaught and his Policy Planning team put up a strategic paper on the concept of the Developing Eight (D-8) Muslim Countries Grouping i.e. Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangla Desh, Egypt and Nigeria as a counter weight to the growing influence of Israel entering our region on an American horse. The first D-8 Summit was soon held in Turkey when Mr. Erbakan became Turkey’s Prime Minister in the mid 1990s’. The last Summit was recently held in Abuja, Nigeria. The present leadership of Turkey is indebted to the role played by Prof Erbakan in bringing back this country to the fold of the Muslim Nations. The recent aggressive mis-handling of the Turkish Humanitarian Flotilla by the Israeli sharks near the Palestinian lands only aggravated the feelings amongst all sensible and sensitive people of the world at the high handedness of the Israeli government and their backers sitting thousands of miles away in their Comfort Zones.

After Israelization of Iraq and Indianization of Afghanistan what is next on their agenda? This million dollar question has to be addressed by every member of the D-8 lest one by one each of them are reduced to a surrogate status. It appears that the appetite of the wolves has not been fully met after the annihilation of the Babylonian lands and the rich Persian Empire may now be under their focus. Malaysia under Dr. Mahathir barely survived the Economic onslaught a few years back along with the political crisis of East Timor in Indonesia. Nigeria and Egypt the only two D-8 countries from the African Continent are undergoing their political leadership transition crisis. Pakistan is under the anvil of Destabilization and Distortion of its image as the first and only Nuclear power in the Muslim World. Bangla Desh has been absorbed by the Indians in South Asian politics and is not free to look elsewhere. We are, therefore, left with only Turkey and Iran in the D-8 countries with Space and Time in their favour, although Iran is in a nut cracker situation under the Most Sanctioned Regime. These are the fault lines within the leading players of the Muslim World which are being fully exploited in the present Power Equilibrium.

Destroying Muslim lands through the American Shock and Awe under the watchful Indo-Israeli nexus could be carried out by high altitude B-52 Bombers flying from Safety Zones but what next? Iraq is no more a country within the grip of its own people while its forty years of development has been overturned into rubble; Afghanistan already a medieval country stuck in the Middle Ages has been unleashed to make other countries in its close vicinity look similar. The division of the Victor and the Vanquished soon disappears when militaries are fighting whole nations. American Military appeared victorious in the Vietnam War till the Rescue Helicopters from the US Naval Fleet were positioned at the roof tops of the Presidential Palace in Saigon to evacuate the marooned Americans and Pro-American leaders from the Palace before their capitulation to the Viet Conges. The Soviets with their draconian Heli-copter Gunships were routing out their enemies in the mountains of Afghanistan till their open and frank leadership of the time admitted and called their Afghan Campaign a “Bleeding Wound” and withdrew from Afghanistan with whatever was left of their pride. The Israelis launched their Armored Pride into Lebanon in the not too distant past only to be check mated for the first time by the rockets fired from the most novel and mobile rocket launchers mounted on motor bikes of the Lebanese volunteers. The historical victors of the First World War may have got the vanquished Germans sign the “Treaty of Versailles” but within twenty years had to face the onslaught of Hitler’s Blitzkrieg in all of Europe. Nations cannot be won by militaries alone. This lesson was very much known in Confucian China of old and in modern times of Jean Paul Sartre’s France, during the Algerian War. Will think tanks in Washington and their cohorts in Tel Eviv and New Delhi draw a lesson or two from the past? Only time will tell.

Mansoor Malik, is Member Board of Advisors, Opinion Maker. In brief, he has been Director General with over 33 year of experience in planning, establishing and managing national level, strategic, high-tech organizations.Director General, Marketing & Industrial Relations Organization (MIRO). Commandant, College of Aeronautical Engineering, Risalpur.

Senior Engineering Manager, PAF Project where he was responsible for the smooth induction of F-16 Aircraft Weapons System in the PAF and making them fully operational.

His experience is very versatile in different fields of technology and education. He is consultant to number of organizations and the Universities of Pakistan.

Leaked files lay bare war in Afghanistan

By Greg Jaffe and Karen DeYoung Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, July 26, 2010

Tens of thousands of classified documents related to the Afghan war released without authorization by the group Wikileaks.org reveal in often excruciating detail the struggles U.S. troops have faced in battling an increasingly potent Taliban force and in working with Pakistani allies who also appear to be helping the Afghan insurgency.

The more than 91,000 classified documents — most of which consist of low-level field reports — represent one of the largest single disclosures of such information in U.S. history. Wikileaks gave the material to the New York Times, the British newspaper the Guardian and the German magazine Der Spiegel several weeks ago on the condition that they not be published before Sunday night, when the group released them publicly.

Covering the period from January 2004 through December 2009, when the Obama administration began to deploy more than 30,000 additional troops intoAfghanistan and announced a new strategy, the documents provide new insights into a period in which the Taliban was gaining strength, Afghan civilians were growing increasingly disillusioned with their government, and U.S. troops in the field often expressed frustration at having to fight a war without sufficient resources.

The documents disclose for the first time that Taliban insurgents appear to have used portable, heat-seeking surface-to-air missiles to shoot down U.S. helicopters. Heat-seeking missiles, which the United States provided to the anti-Soviet Afghan fighters known as mujaheddin in the 1980s, helped inflict heavy losses on the Soviet Union until it withdrew its forces from Afghanistan in 1989.

One report from the spring of 2007 refers to witnesses who saw what appeared to be a heat-seeking missile destroy a CH-47 transport helicopter. The Times first unearthed the document in its review of the files. The Chinook crash killed five Americans, a British citizen and a Canadian. Even though the initial U.S. report stated that the helicopter was “engaged and struck with a missile,” a NATO spokesman suggested that small-arms fire was responsible for bringing down the helicopter.

Although the use of such weapons by the Taliban appears to be very limited, the disclosure that relatively low-tech insurgents had acquired such arms would have fostered the impression that the Afghan war effort was faltering at a time when U.S. fatalities in Iraq were at record levels and the Bush administration was struggling to maintain support for the Iraq war even among its Republican base.

The Obama administration criticized Wikileaks for disclosing the classified documents. “Wikileaks made no effort to contact us about these documents,” national security adviser James Jones said in a statement. “The United States government learned from news organizations that these documents would be posted.”

Senior administration officials acknowledged they had been anxiously awaiting the documents’ release but sought to diminish their significance. “There is not a lot new here for those who have been following developments closely,” one U.S. official said.

Many of the documents posted by Wikileaks suggest that Pakistan’s spy service might be helping Afghan insurgents plan and carry out attacks on U.S. forces in Afghanistan and their Afghan government allies. A few reports also describe cooperation between Pakistani intelligence and fighters aligned with al-Qaeda.

U.S. intelligence concluded a number of years ago that Pakistan retained its ties with Taliban groups, intelligence officials said. Late last year, President Obama warned in a letter to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari that the United States would no longer put up with the contacts.

But the documents appear to suggest that Pakistan’s spy agency, known as the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate or ISI, might have assisted insurgents in planning some attacks, at least in the past.

The Pakistani government denied the allegations in the classified intelligence documents. “These reports reflect nothing more than single-source comments and rumors, which abound on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and are often proved wrong after deeper examination,” said Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States.

The documents detail multiple reports of cooperation between retired Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul, who ran ISI in the late 1980s, and Afghan insurgents battling U.S. forces in the mountainous eastern region of the country. In the latter years of the anti-Soviet insurgency, Gul worked closely with several major mujaheddin fighters who currently are battling U.S. troops and trying to topple the Afghan government. The documents also include reports that Gul was trying to reestablish contacts with insurgent leaders such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani, whose fighters have been responsible for some of the bloodiest attacks on U.S. forces.

Over the past decade, U.S. intelligence has collected evidence of direct contacts between ISI and Jalaluddin Haqqani, Hekmatyar and Taliban leader Mohammed Omar. That evidence includes both human intelligence and intercepted communications, officials said.

As the new Afghan war strategy was being formulated late last year, Obama stepped up private pressure on the Pakistanis to sever ties with the Taliban, suggesting that if there wasn’t improvement, the United States would begin to take matters into its own hands.

“The key thing to bear in mind is that the administration is not naive about Pakistan,” an Obama administration official said. “The problem with the Pakistanis is that the more you threaten them, the more they become entrenched and don’t see a path forward with you.”

Most of the voluminous store of classified reports reflects the daily grind of life in Afghanistan as covered in news reports for the past several years. In them, junior officers complain about poorly equipped Afghan forces, corrupt Afghan government officials and a U.S. war effort that at times seemed to be seriously wanting for resources.

In one document, a team of civil affairs soldiers reports donating money for an orphanage that is supposed to help about 100 fatherless children and finding later that only about 30 boys and girls were being helped. Also missing were the stores of rice, grain and cooking oil that the troops had provided. “We found very few orphans living there and could not find most of the HA [humanitarian assistance] we had given them,” the report states.

Other reports give accounts of police chiefs skimming the pay of their patrol officers or placing nonexistent “ghost” troops on their rolls so that they could pocket the additional salaries.

Another report that chronicles a massive Taliban attack on Combat Outpost Keating in eastern Afghanistan quotes frantic radio calls from an overwhelmed U.S. lieutenant seeking air support to hold off the much larger Taliban force. The attack on the base was chronicled in a Washington Post report this year, based on interviews with the officer and his troops.

At times the U.S. troops show a lack of knowledge about Afghanistan, botching the names of cities and the relationships between senior Afghan officials.

The reports highlight how civilian casualties resulting from mistakes on the battlefield have alienated Afghans. Over the past year, civilian casualties in Afghanistan have dropped significantly. But many of the problems referred to in the memo — a resilient Taliban, porous borders with Pakistani safe havens and largely ineffectual Afghan government — remain.

A feather in the cap: Iran, Iraq and BD Show Willingness to Import Wheat

About 1m tonnes of wheat crop procured

By Ijaz Kakakhel

ISLAMABAD: The governments of Bangladesh, Iraq and Iran have expressed their desire to import wheat from Pakistan through government channel, sources told Daily Times on Wednesday.

PROCUREMENT TARGET FOR 2010
Punjab	4m tonnes
Sindh	1.5m tonnes
Khyber Pakhtunkwa	0.3m tonnes
Balochistan	0.1m tonnes

Federal Minister for Food and Agriculture Nazar Mohammad Gondal expressed these views while presiding over a meeting to review the wheat procurement and progress in the export of surplus wheat.

Hamid Karzai tours with McChrystal after US feud

* Afghan president calls on Taliban ‘brothers’ to lay down arms
* Holbrooke, Petraeus meet Karzai in Kabul

KUNDUZ/LASHKAR GAH: Afghan President Hamid Karzai called on the Taliban “brothers” to lay down their arms, as he appeared with NATO’s commander in a show of solidarity aimed at putting a quarrel with the West behind him.

In a sign of the volatility of a once-peaceful northern region, plans for Karzai to address German troops in Kunduz on Sunday were called off at the last minute. Residents and German forces said rockets had fallen near the German base there.

Obama and the age of permanent war

America has emerged from the era of outright aggression on the rest of the world and into the age of nuanced terror.

John Pilger

Here is news of the Third World War. The United States has invaded Africa. US troops have entered Somalia, extending their war front from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen and now the Horn of Africa. In preparation for an attack on Iran, “bunker-buster” bombs are said to be arriving at the US base on the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

In Gaza, the sick and abandoned population, mostly children, is being entombed behind underground American-supplied walls to reinforce a criminal siege. In Latin America, the Obama administration has secured seven bases in Colombia from which to wage a war of attrition against the popular democracies in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay. Meanwhile, the secretary of “defence”, Robert Gates, complains that “the general [European] public and the political class” are so opposed to war, they are an “impediment” to peace. Remember, this is the month of the March Hare.

Let Pakistan Make Its Own Progress

By NADIA NAVIWALA

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts - What do we do about Pakistan? Because I am a Pakistani-American who recently spent several months there, people here are constantly trying to get me to answer that question. One of the most important things I can offer them is a reality check.

I grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, but my family moved to Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, in the early 1990s. Those were Karachi’s worst years and constitute my earliest memories of terrorism.

Political and ethnic violence wracked the city, becoming, as we have seen in Iraq and Afghanistan today, an excuse for every type of crime – shootings in mosques, kidnappings, violent break-ins and streetside executions if you belonged to the wrong ethnic group. By 1996, my family gave up on Pakistan and came back to the United States. By 1999, Pervez Musharraf gave up on Pakistan and overthrew the government.

Worse than the violence, for a Pakistani-American child, was that Pakistan was boring. As far as I am concerned, Pizza Hut was the only good thing that happened to Pakistan in those years. Prior to that, there was no American fast food in Karachi, let alone malls or highways. You couldn’t even find a decent candy bar.

And as I got older, I grew increasingly irked by the conservatism. Pakistan, I felt, was easily the most closed country in the world – traditional dress was mandatory, girls were either stuck at home or harassed in the streets, and I almost never saw a foreigner.

I never imagined that I would see Pakistan the way I saw it this summer, after a mere 14 years. Karachi today looks like any major, cosmopolitan city – movie theaters, restaurants, and cafés full of boys and girls smoking, in jeans, mingling together.

More women are finishing college and getting jobs, and they have traded traditional baggy shalwars for trousers and capris. The city has been aggressively transformed by a mayor so impressively capable that he seems misplaced in a culture of corrupt politicians and broken bureaucracies.

If I sound like a wide-eyed Pakistani-American, it’s because I am. Pakistan today is more open and progressive than Pakistani communities in the United States. My parents’ generation in America has worked hard to preserve the Pakistan they left behind in the 1980′s.

Pakistani-Americans whisper and shake their heads about the wild parties they hear go on in Pakistan today. It’s true: alcohol, although illegal, is everywhere. And when I celebrated Christmas in Karachi this December, it was a Pakistani-American girl I met there who commented disapprovingly. Meanwhile, my Pakistani friends didn’t believe me when I tried to tell them that, having grown up in the United States, I have never met a Muslim who celebrated Christmas.

This is the change we need in Pakistan, but no U.S. policy or aid program could have brought it about. The desire that many Pakistanis have for a more open and liberal society, and the local leaders and businesses that are making it possible, are our best bet for stability and security in the region. Social change, economic growth, political maturity – these are things that crowd out groups like the Taliban and make their rhetoric fall flat. But these things have no formulas and Americans have the least ability to understand or control them – no matter how many policies are pronounced in Washington or billions of dollars poured into Islamabad.

More importantly, progress in Pakistan – strengthening economic growth, governance and liberal values – takes years to realize but only a few American airstrikes or Taliban bombings to destroy. American mistakes in the region have been aggravating public sentiments for years and fueled fundamentalism in the mainstream. In the 1990s, none of my aunts wore burkas. Now, they all do. And Taliban bombings in the cities are leading to a flight of people with means, usually the most progressive and educated, and capital. As we learned from our support for the mujahedeen in the 1980s, the secondary effects of U.S. policy are the most damning.

How do we harness and support positive trends in Pakistan? If Washington can put good people to work on that question, who will also factor in the limits of American understanding and ground capabilities in Pakistan, they will come to a better question: How can we protect the progress that Pakistanis have already made?

Instead of fixing “Af-Pak,” the best thing America can do for the region is stop it from getting more fouled up than it already is.

So my answer to the question “what do we Americans do?” is to first understand what we have done already: U.S. war policies are inadvertently undermining the social and economic progress that Pakistanis have made over the years.

We need to accept the limits of our capabilities and understanding of realities on the ground. Unlike Iraq and Afghanistan, where the United States and other countries have a huge presence, few Americans travel to Pakistan and U.S. officials are extremely restricted in their movements.

Finally, we need realistic objectives, which will end up looking more like damage control than the magic bullet against the Taliban that everyone is looking for.

Pakistan is a different story from Afghanistan – it is far more developed and modern. Afghans may not have the ability to lead themselves out of this mess, but Pakistanis do. After all, Pakistanis are the ones who suffer the most when their cities are bombed and their soldiers killed. If the United States continues to distort the situation through aggressive policy demands, then we are only reinforcing anti-Americanism and the breakdown of Pakistani institutions. What’s worse, if U.S. attention remains fixated on narrow measures of military success, Pakistan will become collateral damage of the Afghan war.

Nadia Naviwala is a student at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a former national security aide in the U.S. Senate. She is currently researching U.S. development assistance in Pakistan.

This Is How US Agents Sneak Into Pakistan

For a few hundred dollars, low-paid border guards are allowing entry into Pakistan to spies and agents of multiple foreign intelligence agencies operating in Afghanistan. In this story and video, see how a US lady entered Pakistan through Torkham on Saturday, Mar. 13, 2010, without visa and without the knowledge of Pakistani intelligence officers posted there. This happens in a country that faces terrorism exported by both US-controlled Afghanistan and its Indian ally.

BY SYED FAWAD ALI SHAH:

TORKHAM, Pakistan-Rampant corruption and a weak Pakistani state are helping the entry into Pakistan of spies and terrorists from multiple foreign intelligence agencies operating in Afghanistan. Almost all terror in Pakistan is coming from Afghanistan.

This American woman tried to sneak into Pakistan through Torkham on Afghan border today, Saturday, Mar. 13, 2010, around early afternoon. She was wearing an Afghan woman’s burqa and apparently spoke local dialects. She would have successfully crossed into Pakistan safely hidden among a group of Afghan women but something about her demeanor raised the suspicion of a Pakistani border guard.

However, the border guards, known as Khasadars, made sure that Pakistani intelligence officers posted in the area are not told about this arrest. Torkham is considered a hot station within Kasadar tribal force circles. With salaries that go less than PKR 10,000 per month [less than US$ 130], major checkpoints such as Torkham provide an extra source of income for the Khasadars through bribes from travelers.

The guards kept the woman in a room for about thirty minutes and then let her enter Pakistan in her burqa. She paid the Khasadar guards a handsome amount of money as bribe. According a source in the Khasadar Force who witnessed the whole thing, the woman didn’t panic. She appeared composed and familiar with the ways of the border guards. She knew what to do in such a situation.

Thanks to my contacts in the border force, I was able to make a cell phone video of her passport while the Khasadar chief at the checkpoint talked to her.

Her name on the passport was Zohra Rehmati, which makes her an American from either Iranian or Tajik-Afghan extract.

Over the past four years, a large number of US agents have entered Pakistan through Afghanistan. Several have been arrested in different parts of the country disguised as Afghan men, complete with beards and Turbans and fluent in Pashto, Dari and Urdu. Unfortunately, much of this covert American activity was sanctioned first by the Musharraf government and now by the pro-US Zardari-Haqqani combine in the incumbent government.

Ms. Rehmati, if that is her real name, may or may not be a CIA operative, or one of its private contractors associated with either DynCorp or Xe International. But such lax security in a country that is a target of terrorism, DynCorp managed to create quite a covert network in Pakistan before being busted by Pakistani security last year. DynCorp remains in Pakistan, thanks to backing from both the US Embassy in Islamabad and the pro-US government, despite repeated attempts by the country’s security officials to force the US defense contractor to wrap up its operations here. Xe International, formerly known as Blackwater, also operated in Pakistan until 2005 before being moved to Afghanistan, according to an earlier report in the New York Times. But going by the number of incidents in Pakistan over the past couple of years where US private agents were seen operating in major Pakistani cities, it is safe to say that both contractors continue to quietly operate in Pakistan in one

Private contractors help give CIA the benefit of deniability if an agent is arrested on foreign territory.

CIA has been known to send US citizens of foreign descent to their home countries for espionage.

The most recent example is Roxana Saberi, an Iranian-American who was busted in Tehran carrying sensitive documents handed to her by an informant. Ms. Saberi was sent to Iran posing as a journalist. CIA even managed to get her newspaper accreditation from a major American newspaper. The US government was embarrassed at the arrest because Ms. Saberi was arrested red handed receiving official documents from a contact.

In Pakistan, a State that is falling apart at the seams, with no central figure or department to control the rot, is providing the perfect environment for meddling in the country not only by the United States, UK, India and other established powers based in Afghanistan, but also by a puppet regime like that of Mr. Hamid Karzai and his spymasters, who in eight years are in a good position today to wreak mayhem inside Pakistan while the politicians in Islamabad and the military in Rawaplpindi have little recourse beyond words of appeasement or caution during closed-door meetings with foreign powers in Afghanistan that are never translated into action to reestablish Pakistan’s writ domestically and in the region.

Mr. Shah is an independent journalist based in Peshawar.

Mossad’s Rogue Assassins

The Dubai Hit

By URI AVNERY

FROM TIME to time I ask myself: what would happen if the world’s governments decided to abolish all their spy agencies simultaneously?

True, it would be a great blow to the authors and movie producers who make their living from secret service stories. Their products would lose their appeal.

It would be a disaster for the huge army of fans which gobbles up spy adventures, the enthusiastic consumers of books and movies about superhuman heroes like James Bond and super-devious geniuses like John La Carre’s Smiley.

But what would be the real damage if Washington stopped spying on Moscow and Moscow stopped spying on Washington, and both on Beijing? The result would be a draw. Immense sums of money would be saved, since a large part of the efforts of every spy agency is devoted to obstructing the intrigues of the competition. How many diseases could be overcome? How many hungry people fed, how many illiterates taught to read and write?

The popular books and movies celebrate the imaginary successes of the intelligence agencies. Reality is much more prosaic, and it is replete with real failures.

* * *

THE TWO classic intelligence disasters occurred during World War II. In both, the intelligence agencies either provided their political bosses with faulty assessments, or the leaders ignored their accurate assessments. As far as the results are concerned, both amount to the same.

Comrade Stalin was totally surprised by the German invasion of the Soviet Union, even though the Germans needed months to assemble their huge invasion force. President Roosevelt was totally surprised by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, even though the bulk of the Japanese Navy took part in it. The failures were so fantastic, that spy aficionados had to resort to conspiracy theories to explain them. One such theory says that Stalin deliberately ignored the warnings because he intended to surprise Hitler with an attack of his own. Another theory asserts that Roosevelt practically “invited” the Japanese to attack because he was in need of a pretext to push the US into an unpopular war.

But since then, failures continued to follow each other. All Western spy agencies were totally surprised by the Khomeini revolution in Iran, the results of which are still hitting the headlines today. All of them were totally surprised by the collapse of the Soviet Union, one of the defining events of the 20th century. They were totally surprised by the fall of the Berlin wall. And all of them provided wrong information about Saddam Hussein’s imaginary nuclear bomb, which served as a pretext for the American invasion of Iraq.

* * *

AH, OUR people say, that’s what’s happening among the Goyim. Not here. Our intelligence community is like no other. The Jewish brain has invented the Mossad, which knows everything and is capable of everything. (Mossad – “institute” – is short for the “Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations”.)

Really? At the outbreak of the 1948 war, all the chiefs of our intelligence community unanimously advised David Ben-Gurion that the armies of the Arab states would not intervene. (Fortunately, Ben-Gurion rejected their assessment.) In May 1967, our entire intelligence community was totally surprised by the concentration of the Egyptian army in Sinai, the step that led to the Six-Day war. (Our intelligence chiefs were convinced that the bulk of the Egyptian army was busy in Yemen, where a civil war was raging.) The Egyptian-Syrian attack on Yom Kippur, 1973, completely surprised our intelligence services, even though heaps of advance warnings were available.

The intelligence agencies were totally surprised by the first intifada, and then again by the second. They were totally surprised by the Khomeini revolution, even though (or because) they were deeply imbedded in the Shah’s regime. They were totally surprised by the Hamas victory in the Palestinian elections.

The list is long and inglorious. But in one field, so they say, our Mossad performs like no other: assassinations. (Sorry, “eliminations”.)

* * *

STEVEN SPIELBERG’S movie “Munich” describes the assassination (“elimination”) of PLO officials after the massacre of the athletes at the Olympic Games. As a masterpiece of kitsch it can be compared only to the movie “Exodus”, based on Leon Uris’ kitschy book.

After the massacre (the main responsibility for which falls on the incompetent and irresponsible Bavarian police), the Mossad, on the orders of Golda Meir, killed seven PLO officials, much to the joy of the revenge-thirsty Israeli public. Almost all the victims were PLO diplomats, the civilian representatives of the organization in European capitals, who had no direct connection with violent operations. Their activities were public, they worked in regular offices and lived with their families in residential buildings. They were static targets – like the ducks in a shooting gallery.

In one of the actions – which resembled the latest affair – a Moroccan waiter was assassinated by mistake in the Norwegian town of Lillehammer. The Mossad mistook him for Ali Hassan Salameh, a senior Fatah officer who served as contact with the CIA. The Mossad agents, including a glamorous blonde (there is always a glamorous blonde) were identified, arrested and sentenced to long prison terms (but released very soon). The real Salameh was “eliminated” later on.

In 1988, five years before the Oslo agreement, Abu Jihad (Khalil al-Wazir), the No. 2 in Fatah, was assassinated in Tunis before the eyes of his wife and children. Had he not been killed, he would probably be serving today as the President of the Palestinian Authority instead of Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas). He would have enjoyed the same kind of standing among his people as did Yasser Arafat – who was, most likely, killed by a poison that leaves no traces.

The fiasco that most resembles the latest action was the Mossad’s attempt on the life of Khalid Mishal, a senior Hamas leader, on orders of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. The Mossad agents ambushed him on a main street of Amman and sprayed a nerve toxin in his ear – that was about to kill him without leaving traces. They were caught on the spot. King Hussein, the Israeli government’s main ally in the Arab world, was livid and delivered a furious ultimatum: either Israel would immediately provide the antidote to the poison and save Mishal’s life, or the Mossad agents would be hanged. Netanyahu, as usual, caved in, Mishal was saved and the Israeli government, as a bonus, released Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the main Hamas leader, from prison. He was “eliminated” by a hellfire missile later on.

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DURING THE last weeks, a deluge of words has been poured on the assassination in Dubai of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, another senior Hamas officer.

Israelis agreed from the first moment that this was a job of the Mossad. What capabilities! What talent! How did they know, long in advance, when the man would go to Dubai, what flight he would take, in what hotel he would stay! What precise planning!

The “military correspondents” and “Arab affairs correspondents” on screen were radiant. Their faces said: oh, oh, oh, if the material were not embargoed…If I could only tell you what I know…I can tell you only that the Mossad has proved again that its long arm can reach anywhere! Live in fear, oh enemies of Israel!

When the problems started to become apparent, and the photos of the assassins appeared on TV all over the world, the enthusiasm cooled, but only slightly. An old and proven Israeli method was brought into play: to take some marginal detail and discuss it passionately, ignoring the main issue. Concentrate on one particular tree and divert attention from the forest.

Really, why did the agents use the names of actual people who live in Israel and have dual nationality? Why, of all possible passports, did they use those of friendly countries? How could they be sure that the owners of these passports would not travel abroad at the critical time?

Moreover, were they not aware that Dubai was full of cameras that record every movement? Did they not foresee that the local police would produce films of the assassination in almost all its details?

But this did not arouse too much excitement in Israel. Everybody understood that the British and the Irish were obliged, pro forma, to protest, but that this was nothing but going through the motions. Behind the scenes, there are intimate connections between the Mossad and the other intelligence agencies. After some weeks, everything will be forgotten. That’s how it worked in Norway after Lillehammer, that’s how it worked in Jordan after the Mishal affair. They will protest, rebuke, and that’s that. So what is the problem?

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THE PROBLEM is that the Mossad in Israel acts like an independent fiefdom that ignores the vital long-term political and strategic interests of Israel, enjoying the automatic backing of an irresponsible prime minister. It is, as the English expression goes, a “loose cannon” – the cannon of a ship of yore which has broken free of its mountings and is rolling around the deck, crushing to death any unfortunate sailor who happens to get in its way.

From the strategic point of view, the Dubai operation causes heavy damage to the government’s policy, which defines Iran’s putative nuclear bomb as an existential threat to Israel. The campaign against Iran helps it to divert the world’s attention from the ongoing occupation and settlement, and induces the US, Europe and other countries to dance to its tune.

Barack Obama is in the process of trying to set up a world-wide coalition for imposing “debilitating sanctions” on Iran. The Israeli government serves him – willingly – as a growling dog. He tells the Iranians: The Israelis are crazy. They may attack you at any moment. I am restraining them with great difficulty. But if you don’t do what I tell you, I shall let go of the leash and may Allah have mercy on your soul!

Dubai, a Gulf country facing Iran, is an important component of this coalition. It is an ally of Israel, much like Egypt and Jordan. And here comes the same Israeli government and embarrasses it, humiliates it, arousing among the Arab masses the suspicion that Dubai is collaborating with the Mossad.

In the past we have embarrassed Norway, then we infuriated Jordan, now we humiliate Dubai. Is that wise? Ask Meir Dagan, who Netanyahu has just granted an almost unprecedented eighth year in office as chief of the Mossad.

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PERHAPS THE impact of the operation on Israel standing in the world is even more significant.

Once upon a time it was possible to belittle this aspect. Let the Goyim say what they want. But since the Molten Lead operation, Israel has become more conscious of its far-reaching implications. The verdict of Judge Goldstone, the echoes of the antics of Avigdor Lieberman, the growing world-wide campaign for boycotting Israel – all these tend to suggest that Thomas Jefferson was not talking through his hat when he said that no nation can afford to ignore the opinion of mankind.

The Dubai affair is reinforcing the image of Israel as a bully state, a rogue nation that treats world public opinion with contempt, a country that conducts gang warfare, that sends mafia-like death squads abroad, a pariah nation to be avoided by right-minded people.

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Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is a contributor to CounterPunch’s book The Politics of Anti-Semitism.