| Submit your comments on this article |
| India-Pakistan |
| Bazaar parody of Mussolini |
| 2007-11-03 |
| By Premen Addy The sight of Ms Benazir Bhutto offering namaz before the tomb of Mohammed Ali Jinnah was one to treasure. The invocation to the prince of darkness may possibly have included the memorable words of the Prince of Light: "Father forgive them for they not what they do." Two devastating bomb blasts in Karachi ruined the Anglo-American media script for a Roman Triumph, even as they blew away 140 innocents, members of a welcoming throng glued to the black magic of the Bhutto name. The ensuing mayhem was a serial descent into a purgatory of blood, gore and fire. Multitudes of Pakistan's landless poor, having heard Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's beguiling promise of 'roti, kapda aur makan', asked only for bread and were given stones. The Bhuttos, father and daughter, have never done better. They were no more than straws in the ill wind of Pakistani politics. Zulfiqar dreamed he was the people's deity, Napoleon reborn; he was, alas, a bazaar parody of Mussolini. Their ends were not dissimilar, each was a victim of the vengeance meted out in their pomp to adversaries and turncoats alike. Mob power -- unpredictable in mood and direction - was the brew for tyranny and unconstitutional governance based on the lowest common denominators of public life. Pakistan was a criminal enterprise from birth and criminal it has remained ever since. Its devotion to jihad, its perception of war as a divinely regulated sport fit only for the truest breed of men has been elevated from the evilly ridiculous to the spiritually sublime. Hatred of the infidel beginning with the despised Hindu and Jew has spread like a cancer to the Christian West. The designated 'Land of the Pure' is now the noxious hub of Islamist terror, the spectre that stalks the earth and threatens unbelieving communities with extinction. A massive tome of some 500 pages entitled Deception: Pakistan, The United States and Global Nuclear Weapons Conspiracy by investigative journalists Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark relates a dark and forbidding story of Washington's complicity in Islamabad's acquisition of nuclear weapons. Certain countries, India most notably, have for long been paying the wages of an original sin committed by a succession of US Administrations with the connivance of close European allies; now, Americans, Europeans, and the Bush Administration are sharing the heavy cost. Wearying Pecksniffian sermons on moral rectitude and much else besides have taken their toll of public trust. There is increasing distrust about speech that is mere Orwellian double talk. "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others". But there are honest, straight talking exceptions. The former US official Richard Barlow, about whom Levy and Scott-Clark write so eloquently, is surely one. Today, say the authors, "he idles outside his silver trailer on a remote campus site in Montana -- itinerant and unemployed, with only his hunting dogs and a borrowed computer for company. He dips into a pouch of American Spirit tobacco to roll another cigarette. It is hard to imagine that he was once a covert operative at the CIA, the recognised, much lauded expert in the trade in Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)." Mr Barlow's Time of Trouble began with the Reagan Administration, which preferred to turn an infamous blind eye to the clandestine activities of Pakistani rogue scientist AQ Khan, whose web of illicit commerce in nuclear weapon technology was becoming visible to the naked eye. Mr Barlow well appreciated the seriousness of the situation but ran into a wall of cynicism in the higher echelons of Government. Pakistan was a valued US ally and Mr Barlow's persistent efforts to force his superiors to act set off a veritable fire storm of denunciation. He was accused of being a Soviet spy, of suffering from mental and psychological disorders that rendered him unfit for purpose. Officials and Generals bore false witness to Mr Barlow's charges at Congressional hearings. Mr Dick Cheney, Mr Paul Wolfowitz, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, 'Scooter' Libby and Mr Richard Perle (a pearl one would hesitate to cast before the vilest swine) and others of the neocon good and great were determined, come what may, to befriend any regime in Islamabad, however criminal its credentials. Routine certificates of Pakistani good conduct on nuclear weapon acquisition were issued, as required by US law, until 1991. America was in a state of cross-party denial. The US and China were driven by "parallel strategic interests", pronounced Mr Harold Brown, US Defence Secretary in the 1970s, so when a Pakistani nuclear weapon of Chinese design was tested on Chinese soil in 1984 (full 14 years before India's own Pokhran II venture) it passed muster. The thumbscrew pressure on Mr Barlow mounted; his notes and memoranda were subsequently neutered in an ongoing effort to discredit him. His marriage broke up under the strain. He is now seeking a £10 million indemnity in legal proceedings. The chickens are coming home to roost. Cut from the same political cloth, Ms Bhutto will neither be Pakistan's vaunted social emancipator, nor its economic redeemer any more than was her father. Both swung like monkeys on ropes of opportunism, wheeling and dealing at every turn, whether it be with jihadis, the ISI or the military. Such Faustian pacts, as history has repeatedly shown, promise salvation but deliver damnation. The Bhutto-Musharraf concordat may not survive the recent revelation of the lady's involvement with a bogus Gulf company that fronted for Saddam Hussein in the oil-for-food scam. But there remains the enduring consolation of holy writ. Brig SK Malik's The Quranic Concept of War states: "As a perfect divine document , the Holy Quran has given a comprehensive treatment to its concept of war." The Brigadier, peace be upon him, went on to apply Quaranic principles to the modern military strategy. His boss, the late Gen Zia, in his foreword referred admiringly to the way "the book brings out... the Quranic philosophy on the application of military force within the context of the totality that is JIHAD (Zia's emphasis). The professional soldier in a Muslim state, CANNOT (Zia's emphasis) become 'professional' if in all his activities he does not take on the colour of Allah." Peace in our time will clearly be a long time coming. Praise be to Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Mrs Indira Gandhi, PV Narasimha Rao and Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee , et al. But for them, we would be looking askance across the border and saying, "There for the grace of god go I." |
| Posted by:john frum |
| #4 Tragic indeed, when journalists are stricken with Attention Deficit Disorder. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2007-11-03 04:16 |
| #3 Pakistan---another huge success of anglo-american nation building. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2007-11-03 04:05 |
| #2 I thought it was teh bier. But yeah, a lot lost in the translation I expect. |
| Posted by: Thomas Woof 2007-11-03 02:54 |
| #1 Maybe its because of the White Russians, but I swear to Christ this post make absolutely no sense at all. I can't figure out what the hell its even about. One paragraph its Reagan didn't want to know about Khan, then next its about Bhutto being no better than her father, then its well, like really bad fucking poetry. |
| Posted by: Mike N. 2007-11-03 00:20 |