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| India-Pakistan |
| Commentary: Pakistan's paranoid panjandrum |
| 2003-01-08 |
| By Arnaud de Borchgrave UPI Editor-at-large The premier geopolitical thinker and writer of Pakistan, Gen. Aslam Beg, the former Chief of Army Staff after President Zia-ul-Haq, has apparently taken leave of his critical faculties. Beg, always regarded as a voice of moderation in the hothouse of Pakistani politics, runs a think tank called Friends. Its charter is to "foster a culture of peace, security and economic cooperation in the South Asia region and beyond." His latest geopolitical ruminations — a 5,000-word essay e-mailed this week to his worldwide contacts — portray President Bush as a latter-day "Dr. Goebbels" who has "reduced Afghanistan to a wasteland as a consequence of the so-called War on Terror." Interesting interpretation. Given time, repetition, and a sympathetic audience, the calumny will stick in Pakland. It's not going to fly too far out of that particular ideosyncratic orbit, though... "The futility of outrageous war against Afghanistan is increasingly being felt, and the implicit irony comes to light that despite more than $20 billion spent on the savagery, termed war on terror, no gain has been achieved, except the ruthless massacre of innocent people — men, women and children. The al Qaida fighters have not been apprehended in any appreciable number. They either have melted into the crowd or have found safe havens elsewhere to regroup for fresh encounters against the Coalition Forces." We were just commenting on that fact, here in Rantburg. Y'know, we did rely on the Paks to capture the little buggers when we chased them across the border. They really could have done a better job of it. The small-minded among us — like me — think it's because they weren't trying very hard... Beg argues that the U.S. offensive against Osama Bin Laden and Taliban was merely a pretext for long-planned U.S. strategic objectives "to consolidate its prestigious global unipolarity." He also describes — in someone else's words — how a Pakistani intelligence officer got angry about being ordered around by an American who reminded him there was "enough space for Pakistan on the (U.S.) hit list." A bit touchy, are we? Pakistan is one of Washington's most important allies in the war on terrorism. But when a prestigious national figure of Pakistani reasonableness like Beg quotes Ramsey Clark, America's chief self-hating American, as an authority on Washington's ulterior strategic objectives — i.e., world domination — one can measure how artificial the Pakistan-U.S. alliance really is. That's a point we've dwelt upon several times... Ariel Sharon, writes Beg, "bubbling with rage and venom, has even programmed the invasion of Iran, the day after Iraq is crushed." He knows this? He's been reading Indy, I'll bet... "Killing several birds with one stone," Beg continues, "may be the ostensible purpose of strategic sport that USA is playing in the post 9/11 era, and targeting terrorists may only be a replay of Greek tragedy, depicting pathological passion -- 'as flies to wanton boys they kill us for sport.' Under the Bush Doctrine, and its auxiliary notion of pre-emptive strike, the world is transformed into Hobsonian jungle, making any country vulnerable and legitimizing war as weapon of national policy." There are lots of nations that aren't in the terrorist spotlight. They're countries that make reasonable efforts to keep their houses clean. It's just that Pakland isn't one of them... Beg's diatribe was just warming up when he compared president Bush's "pre-emptive passions" to Goebbels' Nazi propaganda rantings. "Protecting their own civilization, by hurling bombs and missiles on other nations, labeled axis of evil or rogue states, is based on conceits and delusions of grandeur," Pakistan's pre-eminent geopolitical sage said. He also accused the U.S. of providing "a model to emulate to Israel, India and Russia to suppress the sacrosanct freedom struggle of people in Palestine, Kashmir and Chechnya by labeling it 'terrorism.'" He has a problem with those "labels," because they seem to fit so well. Israel's plagued by maniacs who explode in places that are croweded with civilians, non-combatants. India is subjected to a similar sort of agony in Kashmir, with the added filip of cutting people's heads off. The Chechen gangsters are fond of taking large numbers of people hostage. Labeling them "terrorists" seems pretty straightforward; it doesn't take a Goebbels to concoct a "big lie" about it, does it? It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Pakistan will be the first to make the list of unintended consequences when and if the U.S. invades Iraq. War on Iraq, Beg says, "is motivated by Bush's desire to please the arms and oil industries in the U.S." Pakistan's answer, he urges, must be "the urgent necessity" of an immediate alliance with Iran "to brave the storm gathering around us." Iranian President Mohammad Khatami paid a three-day state visit to Pakistan over Christmas. Now that would be an interesting, albeit ultimately suicidal move. It fits with the logic of the Islamotoons running the religious parties in Pakland and the turbans in Iran. The world's in the process of choosing up sides right now. Some are reluctant — have a look at Europe. Some were rushed into it, and now don't like the side they're on because of some of the things they have to do to stay there. The war is between west and east, but it's not, at least not at the root level, between Christianity and Islam. It's between individual liberty and the regimentation imposed by the mullahs on their compatriots. Individual liberty is not something that Pakistan understands or even views as a desirable thing. Pakistan's principal terrorist leaders have long since been released from detention where President Pervez Musharraf, a former disciple of Beg, had pledged to keep them. Taliban, which Beg now praises as the instrument that "brought peace and stability to Afghanistan," no longer has to hide in Baluchistan and the Northwest Frontier Province. These are the two Pakistani provinces that border with Afghanistan and that are now governed by a coalition of six politico-religious parties that see the U.S. as the fount of all evil and al Qaida as "freedom fighters." The neo-Talibs are the illustration of the difference between mere democracy and individual liberty... "Minimum cooperation with the Americans" is the word that has gone out to Pakistani military units still going through the motions of assisting U.S. Special Forces find al Qaida survivors in the unmarked, snowcapped saw-tooth mountains that straddle the border. Anyone who's anyone in al Qaida left the border area months ago and has found shelter in Pakistan's major cities or gone on to other countries. The fundo parties were the chicken from which the Taliban egg was hatched. It's natural they'd find shelter with them... The recent incident of a U.S. airstrike on an abandoned border village mosque where a Pakistani border patrolman has sought refuge after shooting and wounding a U.S. soldier has further soured Pakistan-U.S. relations. And in New York where Pakistan joined the U.N. Security Council this month, its U.N. ambassador, Munir Akram, hit the frontpage of the tabloids by beating up his live-in girlfriend. Hey, that's pretty mild for Pakistan... While the Secretary of State Colin Powell's seventh floor of the State Department was working hard to persuade Pakistan to support Washington's tough line on Iraq, another part of the building was asking Pakistan to lift the envoy's diplomatic immunity. In the blink of log on, Pakistani media reported back from New York, Akram had been set up. Hey! So was Marion Barry! And Peewee Herman... This week, too, Indian defense minister stoked the embers of last year's near military showdown between the subcontinent's two nuclear powers. "We can take a (nuclear) bomb or two or more, but when we respond there will be no Pakistan," said George Fernandes. Not the most tactful thing he's said all week, was it? Pakistani Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed fired back, "India will be taught an unforgettable historic lesson if they ever launch a nuclear attack on Pakistan." Musharraf kicked off the latest round of nuclear threats in a Karachi speech last month when he said he had personally warned the Indian prime minister during last year's hostilities to "not expect a conventional war from Pakistan." Next to that, the exchanges between North Korea's Kim Jong il and President Bush seemed pretty tame. I found them remarkably similar... The United States and British intelligence communities believe that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the 66-year-old father of the Pakistan's "Islamic nuclear bomb" and premier national hero, is the evil genius who has passed on his knowledge to the three powers in Bush's "axis of evil" — North Korea, Iran and Iraq. Khan has journeyed to North Korea at least 13 times. In return for a dozen North Korean Nodong missiles in 1993, Pakistan supplied Pyongyang with blueprints of nuclear know-how. We've noticed these fingerprints before... Khan's name also appeared in an intercepted letter to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein offering to "manufacture a nuclear weapon." The International Atomic Energy Agency has a copy of a memo, dated Oct. 6, 1990, from Section B-15 of Iraqi intelligence to Section S-15 of the Nuclear Weapons Directorate that describes "a proposal from Pakistani scientist Abdel Qadeer Khan" to help Iraq "establish a project to enrich uranium and manufacture a nuclear weapon." The Paks denied that one, too... Khan has told interviewers that his nuclear team purchased key bomb-making components from western companies that were in it for the money. "They begged us to buy their goods," he said. So Western non-proliferators were foiled "by the greed of their own companies." If indeed Saddam has one or two nukes stashed away, won't he be tempted to emulate Kim and go public? Stay tuned. There's a certain element of play-acting and fantasy that's inescapable when it comes to Pakistan and its stance in the world. Maybe that's why everybody has an alias and false documents are preferred over genuine. I think part of it's a national inferiority complex — if we were to categorize nations, I'd categorize Pakistan with Afghanistan, rather than with India, which has much more going for it despite its faults. They do dote on their "Islamic nukes" and if I were to bet on the next place where nuclear weapons will be employed, I'd put all my money on Pakistan. Despite their penchant for making faces and calling names, they've never managed to win a war. The Indos have beaten them up every time, and in one instance they took "East Pakistan" — now Bangladesh — away from them. This is not to say that there aren't educated and literate Pakistanis. There are. But they're vastly outnumbered and there's always the likelihood that if they say or do the wrong thing, some Pashtun is going to kill them. The proliferation of extremist organizations, virtually all of them based on some niggling interpretation of Islam, is bewildering, even to them. And every other holy man is an eminence grise. This is a people who have taken Kipling's "great game" entirely too seriously, to the point where they're a danger not only to their neighbors, but to themselves. Given an internal civil war, over some fine point of religion, say, it's entirely likely that Karachi would nuke Rawalpindi or Lahore. If Ms. C. Rice were to call me tomorrow and ask my opinion on U.S. relations with Pakland, I'd advise her to disengage as soon as possible. (I believe they're already on the Top Secret Poop List, along with Soddy Arabia and probably Syria.) I'd suggest assiduous counterdiplomacy to break the alliances they're attempting to form with the lunar edge of the Muslim world and such states are North Korea, and a policy of gradually increasing isolation. One of two things is going to happen to Pakistan: it's either going to start a war with India and get nuked — the Jamaat ad-Dawa is working hard to make that happen; or it will eventually implode, with the Sunnis slaughtering the Shi'ites and vice versa, the Deobandis slaughtering the Ismailis, and all of them slaughtering the Ahmadiyyas. The last Pak will be the one to kill the second-last Pak. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |
| #1 Let's not forget that Qazi's-Jihadis got only 10% of the Pak vote, mostly in backwoods' Balochistan and NWFP. Although I would classify 60% of Paks as indoctrinated Islamists, there is a minority which treats the "bearded ones" as a circus which will close soon. Majority opinion in Sindh and Punjab is reflected in an interesting website: www.thefridaytimes.com Pakistanis who access that site would do anything to prevent the jihadis from getting their hands on the nukes. There is also considerable embarassment at the Pashto's slavish deference to anything Arab, even as the Arabs themselves are recognizing the social idiocy which dominates their national lives. I agree with total disengagement, on the let-'em-roam-they'll-come-home principle. In fact, given the MMA's threats against U.S. soldiers, the Kabul-Herat Highway Reconstruction Project ($200,000,000) should be scrapped until the 600 pounds of jihad - ie. Qazi/Rehman - waste away. |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2003-01-09 02:16:01 |