Pakistan: Recall of U.S. envoy linked to possible plot against military

 The Pakistani ambassador to the U.S. Husain Haqqani has been recalled to Pakistan for questioning. Pakistan President Asif Zardari is alleged to have asked for U.S. help in controlling the Pakistan military in a memo allegedly sent to Admiral Mike Mullen. At the time, Mullen was U.S. top military officer. The Pakistani military had just been humiliated by the U.S. attack that killed Bin Laden.
   A U.S. Pakistan business man who claims to have been involved in the affair reported the plot. According to the plan Zardari would have dramatically weakened Pakistan military intelligence in return for U.S. support in moving against the  armed forces. Zardari has denied any involvement in any plot.
  At first the Pentagon also denied there was any letter but later admitted that there was indeed and the business man was correct about that.The revelation is liable to weaken the Zardari government even further. Haqqani has offered to resign. For more see this article.

 

Robert Fisk: Pakistan is in Pieces

Fisk always give hard hitting personal accounts of places he reports from. He spares neither the Pakistani army, the Taliban, nor Pakistani politicians in reporting the horrors of the conflict in Pakistan. The merciless drone attacks are also covered in detail. This is just part of the article. The entire article is available here.

Robert Fisk: Pakistan is in pieces





American drones overhead, Taliban troops on the offensive, and the horrifying rise of child kidnapping – Pakistan is in pieces, writes Robert Fisk, in a devastating portrait of a country thwarted by violence and corruption.


Pakistan ambushes you. The midday heat is also beginning to ambush all who live in Peshawar, the capital of the North West Frontier Province. Canyons of fumes grey out the vast ramparts of the Bala Hisar fort.
“Headquarters Frontier Force” is written on the ancient gateway. I notice the old British cannon on the heights – and the spanking new anti-aircraft gun beside it, barrels deflected to point at us, at all who enter this vast metropolis of pain. There are troops at every intersection, bullets draped in belts over their shoulders, machine guns on tripods erected behind piles of sandbags, the sights of AK-47s brushing impersonally across rickshaws, and rubbish trucks and buses with men clinging to the sides. There are beards that reach to the waist. The soldiers have beards, too, sometimes just as long.


I am sitting in a modest downstairs apartment in the old British cantonment. A young Peshawar journalist sits beside me, talking in a subdued but angry way, as if someone is listening to us, about the pilotless American aircraft which now slaughter by the score – or the four score – along the Afghanistan border. “I was in Damadola when the drones came. They killed more than 80 teenagers – all students – and, yes they were learning the Koran, and the madrasah, the Islamic school, was run by a Taliban commander. But 80! Many of them came from Bajaur, which would be attacked later. Their parents came afterwards, all their mothers were there, but the bodies were in pieces. There were so many children, some as young as 12. We didn’t know how to fit them together.”


The reporter – no name, of course, because he still has to work in Peshawar – was in part of the Bajaur tribal area, to cover negotiations between the government and the Taliban. “The drones stayed around for about half an hour, watching,” he says. “Then two Pakistani helicopter gunships came over. Later, the government said the helicopters did the attack. But it was the drones.”
An Islamabad garden now, light with bright oak trees and big birds that bark at us from the branches, beneath which sit two humanitarian workers, both Europeans who have spent weeks in the Swat valley during and after the Pakistani army’s offensive against the Taliban. “There were dozens – perhaps hundreds – executed by the army. They were revenge killings by the soldiers, no doubt about it. A number of people we had reported to us as arrested – they were later found dead. What does that mean? The Americans and the Brits were aware of this, of course they were, and they intervened with the government. But what does this say about the army? In one village, two bodies lay in the street for two days – it was a way of showing the local people what would happen to them if they supported the Taliban. What does this say about the army? Can they control Pakistan like this?”


Some 70 per cent of the Pakistani army come from Punjab, and 80 per cent of retired army officers come from Punjab. In a few days, Punjab will pay for this.


But lest the Taliban appear in freedom-fighter mode, here is a different account of the Swat valley by one of Pakistan’s most eloquent journalists, Owais Tohid, reporting from the city of Mingora. Read, as they say, and inwardly digest. “Splotches of red blood still stain Ziarat Gul’s memory: his sister was gunned down by the Taliban and her body placed at the chowk [square] where I stand… A year ago, Gul’s sister, Shabana, was shot three times by the bearded and turbaned men.” Shabana was a singing and dancing girl, of whom there are many in the tribal areas; they perform at weddings, while the men play harmoniums and the stringed rabab.


Back to Owais Tohid. “Her body was then strewn with currency notes, CDs of her performances, and her photographs. Pooled in blood, nobody was allowed to her body until the next day. Gul, his father and two cousins were the only ones to offer funeral prayers and bury her the next morning…” Shabana’s friend Shehnaz, a famous dancing girl, was a witness to the murder: “I switched off the light and peeped through a hole; I could see the door was broken. Shabana sat on the floor and Taliban carrying Kalashnikovs and rocket-launchers stood around her. Some carried swords. I heard Shabana beg them to spare her life. She was pleading, ‘Don’t kill me, don’t kill me.’ But then one of the Taliban said, ‘We warned you … we even offered you our mujahid to marry, but you continued to dance…’ Shabana continued pleading…” Shehnaz heard the gunshots.

I wonder if all these tales are true. Alas, they are. Not far from Peshawar last month, a dancing troupe was returning from a party in Hindko Damaan, when armed men surrounded their vehicle at 3am. Afsana, one of the girls, had her two sisters, Salma and Sana, alongside her in the car, and her stepfather, Azizur Rahman. Her brother, in a following car, argued with the gunmen, who were demanding money. So they shot Afsana dead. She had just divorced, and danced to earn money for her family. Three other girls have been murdered outside Peshawar in the past fortnight.


But the drones dominate the tribal lands. They killed 14 men in just one night last month, at Datta Khel in north Waziristan. The drones come in flocks, and five of them settled over the village, firing a missile each at a pick-up truck, splitting it in two and dismembering six men aboard. When local residents as well as Taliban arrived to help the wounded, the drones attacked again, killing all eight of them. The drones usually return to shoot at the rescuers. It’s a policy started by the Israeli air force over Beirut during the 1982 siege: bomb now, come back 12 minutes later for a second shot. Now Waziristan villagers wait up to half an hour – listening to the shrieks and howls of the dying – before they try to help the wounded.


The drones – Predators and Reapers, or “Shadows”, as the Americans call them when they follow US troops into battle – have acquired mythical proportions in the minds of Pakistanis, a form of spaceship colonialism, imperialism from the sky, caught with literary brilliance by A H Khayal in the daily newspaper The Nation, when he asked where the drones come from: “The masses are piteously ignorant. They just don’t know that the drones are not material creatures. Actually, they are spiritual beings. They don’t need earthly runways for taking off… They live in outer space, beyond the international boundaries of Afghanistan and Pakistan.


“When they feel hungry, they swoop down and kill innocent Afghani women and children. They eat the corpses and fly back to their spacial residences for a siesta. When they again feel hungry, they again swoop down and kill another lot of innocent women and children. Having devoured the dead bodies, they fly back to their bedrooms in space. It has been going on and on like this for years.”

Indeed it has. But where do the drones come from? When President Hamid Karzai flew into Islamabad last month, the entire Pakistani cabinet turned up to welcome this fraudulently elected satrap of the United States. Many are the Pakistanis who found this a natural circumstance. Was not their own President, Asif Ali Zardari, another of Washington’s corrupt satraps, his minions heading to Washington only two weeks later to plead for a vast increase in the $7.8bn (£5.1bn) of aid which Congress voted Pakistan last year? “There was a time when America did not trust you,” Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Yousuf Gilani, lectured the upper house of his federal parliament. “You were their ally, but they did not trust you. Now they are trusting you and holding a strategic dialogue.”


It was enough to make the average Pakistani squirm. After Hillary Clinton arrived last November to berate the students of Pakistan on their anti-Americanism – and to hint that their government must surely know the location of al-Qa’ida’s top men in the tribal lands – the Foreign Minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, set off to Washington last week with his chain-smoking army commander, General Ashfaq Kayani, with the biggest begging bowl in Pakistani history. President Barack Obama wants an exit strategy in Afghanistan and realises – at last – that only Pakistan can provide this. But he also wants to support India as a bulwark against China, and the Pakistanis know that Delhi’s agents are trying to control Afghanistan.


But what struck Pakistanis about Karzai’s visit was not his cloying remarks about the fraternal love of the Afghan and Pakistani people – “India is our close friend but Pakistan is like a twin brother,” he piously observed – but his astonishing statement that the devastating missile attacks against Pakistan by pilotless US drone aircraft were not being launched from inside Afghanistan.


“We are not responsible for these attacks,” he said. “They are being carried out by a powerful sovereign country, namely the United States, which is also a close ally of Pakistan. They [the drones] don’t fly from our territory but in our airspace, and it is beyond our capacity to stop them.” Karzai looked subdued, apologetic, meekly sympathising with Gilani over the growing number of civilian casualties.

Karzai was (for once) telling the truth. The drones launched from the Kandahar airbase are attacking the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban inside the international frontier. The drones attacking Pakistan come from – Pakistan.


In fact, the Americans launch them from a Pakistan Air Force base at Terbile, 50 miles west of Islamabad. US officers were also interested in using the Peshawar airfield – the same runways employed by the old U-2 spy planes, from which Gary Powers took off over the Soviet Union during the Cold War – and the Taliban spent weeks trying to discover the headquarters from which the Americans were directing the drones. They eventually decided that the US drone control centre was on the highest floor of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad.


They were wrong. US officers did stay at the Marriott, but they were not air force personnel. This, however, was the reason the Marriott was attacked by a suicide bomber in 2007, and then again with a truckload of explosives on 20 September 2008 – not because President Zardari had just given his first speech to parliament a few hundred metres away, but because the Taliban were trying to destroy the “brain” behind the drones. At least 54 civilians were killed – most of them Pakistanis – and 266 wounded. The drone attacks continued, more than ever after Barack Obama became US President.


The war, however, is now directed at the Pakistani army – although the authorities try to portray the Taliban’s targets as purely civilian. The assault on the police torture centre in Lahore on 8 March was merely a warning. Nine policemen were among the 18 dead at a building known for its night-time torture sessions – local inhabitants had complained many times about screams from the basement, not because of the abuse taking place there but because it made their homes a target for bombers. They were right. The worst suicide bombing of the year had already occurred at a volleyball field in Lakki Marwat, when the killer murdered 105 people – many of them policemen and Frontier Corps personnel. On 4 February, another suicide bomber – after a long surveillance operation by the Pakistani Taliban – struck a military convoy in the Koto area of the Lower Dir district. He killed three schoolgirls, a Frontier Corps policeman – and three US soldiers. Since 11 September 2001, more than 5,700 men and women have been killed in insurgent attacks in Pakistan. This is revenge for the army’s offensives in Swat and Waziristan.


The double suicide attack on two army vehicles in Lahore, the Punjabi capital, on 12 March was thus merely the most brazen assault on the Pakistani military. Both killers destroyed themselves next to two army trucks – killing 14 soldiers – in the garrison city, shaming the security authorities and provoking the local chief minister, Shahbaz Sharif, to plead shamefully with the Taliban to spare his capital in future. Attack another city, was the implication. Sixty-one men and women were killed – most of them, of course, civilians – and hundreds wounded. Within 24 hours, another suicide bomber attacked an army checkpoint in the North West Frontier Province at Saidu Sharif, killing 14 people, most of them soldiers and policemen.


Even the military were surprised by the determination of the Pakistani Taliban to assault them. Four days after the attack in Lahore, the police found 1,500 kilos of explosives and two suicide vests in Iqbal Town in the Punjabi capital, along with Russian-made hand grenades and rifle ammunition. The next day, they discovered another 3,000 kilos of explosives in the same area. Amir Mir, the most accurate of Pakistani journalists amid the chaos of what is in fact a war, has calculated that 321 Pakistanis have been killed and more than 500 wounded in 15 suicide bombings across Pakistan in the first 70 days of 2010. This is up from ‘only’ 11 suicide bombings in the same period last year.


The Institute for Peace Studies in Pakistan has been recording every act of violence in the country since the 2001 attack on America, and concludes that just in 2009 12,632 men and women – civilians, soldiers, Taliban militants, even victims of inter- tribal battles – were killed. Of the dead, 3,021 were killed by insurgents, 6,329 in Pakistan army operations, 1,163 in army-Taliban battles, 700 in border violence, and 1,419 in other violence, including drone missiles.


The scorecard for death over the past four years – I’m afraid that death in Pakistan is today much like a tally – is truly awful. In 2005, a mere 216 Pakistanis were reported killed. In 2006, 907 Pakistanis died; in 2007, 3,448; in 2008, 7,997. By 2009, the total number of victims in just five years came to more than 25,000. When I twice visited Lahore, it felt like a city under martial law, thronged with troops and checkpoints, its bridges and ancient British ministries and schools laced with soldiers in steel helmets.


In just two weeks in March – far from Lahore – lawlessness reached epic proportions. On 14 March, four men were killed in the Khyber tribal area. In Quetta on 17 March, a retired policeman, a member of a “sectarian organisation”, and two construction workers were shot dead or blown up. A day later, 10 men of the Mehsud tribe – quite possibly militants – were killed in a five-missile US drone attack. In a suburb of Peshawar on the same day, three Frontier Force soldiers and two policemen were shot dead. In Karachi that day, two political leaders, their lawyer and a taxi driver were shot. Within 24 hours, a prominent Quetta lawyer was kidnapped. By the end of the same week, the Pakistani Taliban publicly announced that it intended to murder the Pakistani Interior Minister, Rehman Malik. And there would be more attacks across the country, the Taliban said, in revenge for the American drone attacks. “Just wait for our reaction,” the Taliban’s spokesman, Azam Tariq, said.

The Pakistani military responded in the time-honoured way. The Taliban’s attacks were “a clear sign of frustration and desperation” on the part of the militants. The director of the CIA, Leon Panetta, declared from the safety of Washington that the drone assaults – and other attacks, unspecified – were “the most aggressive operation that the CIA has been involved in in our history. The CIA’s offensive in the Pakistan tribal region had driven Osama bin Laden and his colleagues into hiding – where they have presumably been since 2001 – leaving al-Qa’ida “rudderless and incapable of planning sophisticated operations”.


Pakistan surely deserves better than this nonsense. Embedded with the Pakistani military, writers such as Michael O’Hanlon in The New York Times remind their readers that America’s $17bn in aid since 2001 comes to only half Pakistan’s costs in the “war on terror”, a battle to which the Pakistani army is now fully committed (or so he believes). This, however, does not explain the scores of soldiers who have surrendered to the insurgents over the past 12 months, nor the weird double-game being played by the Pakistani security services, who captured senior members of the Afghan Taliban only to find themselves condemned by Hamid Karzai’s corrupt government for breaking up the secret communications between the Afghan government and its enemies. The US was “extremely gratified” by Pakistan’s arrests, President Obama’s envoy, Richard Holbrooke, says. In other words, the Americans would control contacts with the Afghan Taliban – not their local ruler, Hamid Karzai.


And all the while, the ’security’ experts who dominate the American press have been sowing their suspicions through the dumbed-down intelligence world of the West. For while we bomb the tribal regions with our drones, we are told to fear the imminent theft of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. Terrorists, we are told in a West Point journal, may take the country’s atomic arms for use against us – note how this threat never seems to apply to our trusted ally, India – and mythical accounts are told of three separate attacks by “terrorists” (unnamed, of course) on Pakistan’s nuclear facilities in the last three years. In the past we were told that Muslim “nationalists” might hijack Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. Now the danger is supposed to come from “Islamists”. In fact, the real danger is much closer to home.


Seventy per cent of NATO’s ammunition, vehicles and food in Afghanistan still transits through Pakistan, along with 40 per cent of its fuel. The Taliban’s attacks on these convoys – both the Pakistani and Afghan versions of the movement (for they are not the same) – have over the past two years netted some incredible dividends, which NATO has not seen fit to disclose. Gunmen have managed to steal three separate – disassembled but complete – military helicopters and a clutch of American Humvee armoured vehicles, one of which was used by the Pakistani Taliban’s leader, Hakimullah Mehsud. At least 62 Humvees were burned out in just one raid near Peshawar in 2008.


And all this, you have to remember, takes place against the profound corruption of Pakistani society, from the shoe-shine boy to the president, Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir Bhutto’s widower, whose own venality is so legendary that only rarely does it cause discussion. Only once in the last month has it been mentioned – when Zardari, addressing a conference on Sufism and peace, announced that he was not afraid of death, that he represented “nothing more than a speck in the universe” and would donate his body organs on his death. Within hours, five people – including my taxi driver, a hotel waiter, the owner of an Islamabad bookshop, a Pakistani humanitarian worker and a lawyer – made precisely the same comment to me: “Zardari will donate his body organs to the people – but not his dollars!”

Pakistan parliament to trim president's powers.

These powers were given to the president after a military coup installed Musharraf. Not only will these powers be taken away but also Zardari is in a fight with the Supreme Court as he has not implemented an order that removes his immunity from prosecution for earlier criminal charges against himself and others in his government. There could be another real crisis if these moves do not go ahead. This is from antiwar.com.

Pakistan Parliament to Curb Zardari’s Powers as Court Battle Looms
Posted By Jason Ditz

Pakistan’s parliament is expected to move on major changes to the constitution in the next few weeks, fulfilling a several year old campaign promise to curb the enormous power of the presidency.

The ruling Pakistani Peoples Party had vowed to make the position of president essentially a ceremonial one, but after taking power in 2008 President Zardari has repeatedly stalled this move, at times even using the expanded powers to his advantage.

The power of the presidency in Pakistan was greatly expanded after the coup which installed General Pervez Musharraf as President of the nation. Musharraf granted himself near dictatorial powers over the nation, though an ever growing protest movement eventually forced him from office and into exile.

In addition to losing the bulk of his power to this move, Zardari also faces an upcoming battle with the Pakistani Supreme Court over the fact that he has still refused to implement a December 2009 ruling stripping him and other top government officials of legal immunity for their assorted past crimes.

The immunity was a presidential edict of Musharraf’s, and has been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Zardari has sought to appeal and has simply ignored the ruling, which could lead to the immediate indictment of the Defense and Interior Ministers, among others.

Pakistan government of Zardari fighting with Pakistan Judiciary.

It seems that the Zardari government is always in hot water. Zardari is continuing his dispute with the court a court that has always fought for its rights even against the military govt. of Musharraf.Zardari obviously wants to pack the court with his own supporters just as the military government had done. Little attention is being paid to this issue in the mainstream western press.

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Opposition Sees Shades of 2007 in Pakistan’s Judiciary Crisis

Posted By Jason Ditz

Pakistani opposition leader Nawaz Sharif today termed President Asif Ali Zardari the gravest threat to democracy in the nation’s history, an incredible statement in a nation rife with coups d’etat, including one that ousted Sharif from his former role as prime minister.

Sharif’s comments come amid a growing crisis of confidence over what has come to be known as the “judges issue” in Pakistan, stemming from a dispute between the Supreme Court and the Zardari government over judicial appointments.

The constitution in Pakistan requires the president to consult the judiciary over the appointment of judges, but instead President Zardari ignored the recommendations and appointed two key judges seen as favorable to his administration. The Supreme Court declared the appointments illegal and struck them down yesterday.

The incident didn’t occur in a vacuum, of course. The Zardari government has been clashing with the judiciary for nearly a year, and over the past few months has been in open battle with them over the loss of legal immunity for key members of the Zardari government, which could ultimately force the government from office and land several high profile ministers in prison for corruption.

Several opposition members, including Sharif, have suggested that the current dispute has shades of a November 2007 dispute in which then-President Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency and had much of the court arrested by the military. Zardari insists that he has no plans to annouce another state of emergency.

Though Zardari has repudiated the actions of Musharraf, in March of last year he ended up in open clash with much of the nation over his refusal to restore the judges ousted by Musharraf in 2007. Zardari placed portions of the country under emergency rule, temporarily ousted the provincial government of Punjab, and attempted to use the military to stop a public protest led by Sharif. Ultimately the protests were so massive and the military so reluctant to crush them that Zardari was forced to restore the judiciary, setting the stage for the battles with the restored judiciary over the balance of power which continues today.

At this point, most acknowledge that there is no working relationship between the executive and the judiciary, and while the ruling PPP organizes pro-Zardari rallies, most of the opposition seems to be squaring up firmly on the opposite side. Pakistan’s polity seems to be growing more polarized by the minute.


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Pakistan Supreme Court Threatens to Call in Army!

No doubt the US is scrambling to make contacts with opposition members and within the governing party to prepare for what will happen if Zardari is forced to resign, a situation that seems to be more likely as the days go by. Pakistan US relations seem destined to be unsettled during 2010.





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Pakistan’s Supreme Court Threatens to Call in Army Over Zardari Immunity

Posted By Jason Ditz

In a move that could greatly up the ante in the clash between the Zardari government and the Pakistani judiciary, A top lawyer of the Pakistani Supreme Court warned that they could call in the army to enforce their rulings in the administration declined to do so.

Last month the Supreme Court declared the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) unconstitutional, stripping several key members of the ruling party of legal immunity from a littany of corruption charges stemming from their roles in the previous administrations.

Though President Zardari hypothetically retains immunity through his office, it has also been argued that Zardari’s election was itself illegal because he would have been unable to run without the NRO in place.

Zardari’s ruling Pakistani Peoples Party (PPP) has unsuccessfully petitioned to have Zardari’s immunity retroactively restored, and the court said they could issue another appeal to the decision.

At the same time, Zardari is said to be under growing pressure to resign, with media outlets reporting that he has been sent “umpteen” messages from government institutions, including the military, which have been working with Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani, one of the few top PPP members not currently under charges.

US govt-run radio fears coup in Pakistan

No doubt the US already has plenty of contacts and feelers out both to the generals and to the opposition politicians. There does not seem to be any big hurrahs from the US as the judicial system restores constitutional order in Pakistan. The decision to void the amnesty simply makes things more difficult for the US and weakens Zardari's government as both he and some of his key ministers were covered by the amnesty. Given that the US seems to be upping drone attacks it may be difficult for any overtly pro-US government to govern successfully in Pakistan.


US govt-run radio fears coup in Pakistan



Wednesday, December 23, 2009
WASHINGTON: “Conditions in Pakistan have been ripening, like the mango fruit eaten there, for another military coup d’etat. The economy has slumped, corruption is rampant, and terrorism is endemic. People are losing faith in the officials they brought to power,î US Congress funded Radio Free Liberty (RFE) said in a political commentary on Pakistan on Monday.

RFE is supervised by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, a bipartisan federal agency overseeing all US international broadcasting services. It is funded by the US Congress and broadcasts in 28 languages to 20 countries.

Written by Jamsheed K Choksy, a professor of Central Eurasian, Indian, Iranian, Islamic, and international studies, the commentary said: “This time, the soldiers may not have to use guns and tanks. They can bide their time until the elected government descends into chaos, then march in as national saviours. But the country’s judiciary is swiftly becoming a player to be reckoned with too.”

It said: “On December 16, Pakistan’s Supreme Court declared as unconstitutional a National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO). The NRO was an amnesty granted in October 2007 by former coup leader, and subsequently president, General Pervez Musharraf, to politicians facing corruption and other criminal charges filed between January 1986 and October 1999. With that decision, all hell broke looseÖ”

“Even President Asif Ali Zardari faces the possibility of 12 corruption charges being reinstated. Worse, the Supreme Court has suggested that the government ask Switzerland to reopen a money-laundering investigation against him that was dropped on grounds of poor mental health. Under Pakistani law, Zardari — mocked as a highly corrupt ‘Mr 10 Per cent’ — cannot be prosecuted while he is president.

“But the calls for him to resign or be removed are mounting. So are demands by political opponents and the general public that his inefficient administration be stripped of power. A cabinet reshuffle is unlikely to placate either his opponents or the general public. Even before the latest debacle, Zardari had ceded his presidential role in the nation’s nuclear chain of command — yet another sign of his ever-weakening authority.

“Pakistan’s military has regained some of its prestige through considerable success in recent combat against Islamic militants within the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

“The generals remain one group — the other is the judiciary — seen as largely untainted by the political chaos that is engulfing the country. In recent months, they have been demonstrating their independence from the United States and loyalty to the nation of Pakistan by resisting demands to expand foreign involvement in counterinsurgency endeavors. Not unexpectedly, the military once again faces mounting pressure to restore order in Pakistan, even at the expense of democracy.

“So Pakistan’s armed forces often are expected to lead the nation in times of political uncertainty. As the generals remain silent, it is left to the government of President Zardari to deny the possibility of its ouster. Even if the civilian government survives the current legal crisis, it might not have long left in running Pakistan owing to the other mounting problems there.

“Zardari’s administration has been reduced to threatening people for SMS texting jokes about its corruption with jail terms of up to 14 years. This complicates matters for the United States, where Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently declared “supporting democracy and fostering development are cornerstones of our 21st-century human rights agenda.”

“As Pakistan’s primary ally and aid donor, the United States may indeed face the distinct prospect of having to deal directly yet again with a military leadership in a strategically important and nuclear-armed state. That relationship is already tense, owing to ‘issues that continue to fester’, by the US deputy assistant secretary of defence’s own admission.

“Yet the United States is in the midst of waging a war against terror there and across the border in Afghanistan that is ‘not only necessary but morally justified’ as President Barack Obama said when accepting the Nobel Peace Prize. Hence, the US government dares not suspend either military-technology or civilian aid lest it risk losing Pakistan’s already somewhat-reluctant assistance.

“So, despite its avowed aim of promoting democracy and human rights worldwide, the current US administration may soon be stuck with having to accept an illegitimate Pakistani government led by generals trying to restore order.

“Such, if the past is an accurate indicator, will be the hefty price of realpolitik for both Pakistan and the United States. Not all comes up tails, however. In late July, Pakistan’s Supreme Court declared illegal an earlier state of emergency declared by the military. It is likely to do so again. “An increasingly independent judiciary bodes well for democracy in Pakistan — over the long term.”

Pfaff: Arrogant US Misses the Message from Pakistan's People.

It is not really a question of being arrogant it is that the US is quite used to bribing people in order to achieve their aims. The Pakistani armed forces are dependent for weapons and even for funding on the US government. That being the case the US government feels it should be able to call the tune. Of course a lot of this aid feed corrupt officials in the military but if anything there is even more corruption in the civilian govt. However, there is less US complaint about that since Zardari does what he is told by Washington for the most part. Pfaff is correct of course that this type of action feeds anti-Americanism and will cause strong opposition to the Zardari govt. Pfaff might have noted that the US is also increasing drone attacks often with collateral damage that will help militants recruit more suicide bombers. This is from antiwar.com.

Arrogant US Misses the Message From Pakistan’s People

by William Pfaff, October 28, 2009

There has always been in American foreign policy circles a virus called arrogance, caused by the hereditary assumption that Americans know better than others. Surprisingly, this does not always prove the case, but the condition seems highly resistant to treatment, even by experience.

There seems a high probability that the disease has struck Obama administration policy circles dealing with Pakistan. (We will leave aside the case of American relations with Afghanistan.) This administration came to office with a conviction that the Afghanistan problem is a problem because it actually is a Pakistan problem, Pakistan being a large country possessing nuclear weapons and a great many Pashtuns, who are the people from whom Taliban are recruited.

Afghanistan is a country with one-sixth Pakistan’s population, with a great many Pashtuns, too, harboring only a 100 or so members of al-Qaeda (if we are to believe the American national security adviser, Gen. James Jones), whereas popular opinion in Washington is that Pakistan is rife with them, and the country is on its way to becoming a "breeding ground" for terrorists who wish to invade the West, blow it up with nuclear weapons obtained from Pakistani stocks, and establish a new global terrorist caliphate amidst the ruins.

It is unknown whether Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, visiting Pakistan this week, shares so alarmed a view, but she will hear a lot about the damage American pressures are doing to Pakistan and how fearful the Pakistani populace is, not of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, but of the United States.

According to a New York Times article this week, from Jane Perlez in Islamabad, the new fighting there against Islamists "has pleased the Americans, but it left large parts of Pakistan under siege, as militants once sequestered in the country’s tribal areas take their war to Pakistan’s cities. Many Pakistanis blame the United States for the country’s rising instability."

A recent and serious poll found that 11 percent of the Pakistani respondents said that al-Qaeda is the greatest threat to Pakistan today, 18 percent said India, and 59 percent said the United States. This was in August, before the most recent offensives of the Pakistani army against the Islamists in Waziristan and the Swat Valley, and the retaliatory city bombings that subsequently have taken place.

A vocal part of the Pakistani population clearly doesn’t want the United States in their country, and it doesn’t even want the aid the United States is sending. A notorious fact in the past has been that civilian and popular opposition to the U.S. was based on the assumption that American aid was meant to keep military governments in place and buy military cooperation with American policy.

This time, it’s the army that doesn’t want the $7.5 billion aid package that the Obama administration has put together; the aid is denounced as meant to interfere in the country’s internal affairs – as indeed it is.

The civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari, generally thought put in place by Washington, "is seen as slavishly pro-American [as well] as unable to cope" with the current situation (I am again quoting Jane Perlez).

The country’s interior minister was hit with stones by students when he visited the International Islamic University last week, and in retaliation the government closed all the schools and universities in Punjab, the most populous province (supposed to reopen Monday, Oct. 26), "a move that affected Pakistani families like never before."

To judge from the public statements of Obama counselors, Pakistan is seen as the great danger in the region, with erratic politics and nuclear weapons – and an active Islamist revolt thereby having the potential to create (according to Obama’s adviser Bruce Riedel) "the most serious threat to the United States since the end of the Cold War."

This would seem why the U.S. wants a government under its thumb to compel the army to fight the Islamists on their home territory even if this alienates the army and sows hatred of America. Is it not possible to allow Pakistan, which has a solid civil service and an excellent army, to act in defense of its own security rather than let the U.S. impose its own ideas?

Is it not imaginable that they know better than the Americans? Would Americans appreciate a Pakistani army installed in Washington, instructing the United States in how to conduct its own foreign policy in ways that suit Pakistan’s

Tariq Ali: Ahmed Rashid's War

This article is critical of the surge project and one the key advisors who is plumping for it--along with his support for Karzai and Zardari in Pakistan. Ali is particularly revealing of the corruption in the Zardari government. The U.S. seems so worried about corruption in the military that it put conditions on its aid but there is nothing about their pet Zardari who is one of the venal of all Pakistani politicians.

Ahmed Rashid's War
By TARIQ ALI
After breakfast, I read Gideon Rachman’s often revealing blog on the Financial Times website. Today there was some very good news. Ahmed Rashid, a leading adviser to the US hawks on Afghanistan, is depressed. Deconstructing Rachman on this occasion might be useful for CounterPunch readers:
“…Jon Snow of Channel 4 News, allowed me to gatecrash a breakfast he was having with Ahmed Rashid. In theory, Ahmed is just a journalist like us. But his views on Afghanistan and Pakistan are now so widely sought that he has really become a player. He seems to be consulted by everybody - and I mean, everybody.”
This last is a slight exaggeration. The main people who consult Rashid, apart from Robert Silvers at the New York Review of Books, are US policy-makers in favor of a continuous occupation of Afghanistan. Rashid provides them with many a spurious argument to send more troops and wipe out the Pashtuns opposing the occupation. Within Afghanistan, Rashid’s principal backer and friend is Hamid Karzai who has now managed to antagonize even the tamest US liberals such as Peter Galbraith, recently sacked as a UN honcho in Kabul because he suggested that Karzai had rigged the elections. Rashid the journalist has no time for people who suggest that Karzai is a corrupt rogue, whose family is now the richest in the country, or that he manipulates US public opinion with the aid of PR companies, friends in Washington and, of course, Ahmed Rashid himself.
Back to the Rachman blog:
“So it was worrying to find Ahmed in a distinctly depressed mood. The last time I saw him was back in April at the Nato summit in Strasbourg, when he was feeling a bit cheerier. He had been impressed by the Obama administration’s decision to put more troops into Afghanistan, and cheered by the Pakistani military’s apparent willingness to take on the Pakistani Taliban in the Swat valley. But now, he is seriously worried that the Americans are having cold feet and will step back - and that Pakistan itself will be be destablized by a resurgence of the Afghan Taliban.”
Its astonishing to me why neither Snow nor Rachman, both intelligent journalists, did not question Rashid on what are the real problems confronting Pakistan and whether killing people is the only solution? Rashid is committed to the current corrupt regime led by Asif Zardari who together with his cronies and henchmen does the bidding of the US Embassy in Ialamabad without questioning any instruction.
The US Viceroy in Pakistan, Anne Patterson 9earlier posting: Colombia) can be disarmingly frank. Earlier this year, she offered a mid-term assessment to a visiting Euro-intelligence chief. While Musharraf had been unreliable, saying one thing in Washington and doing its opposite back home, Zardari was perfect: ‘He does everything we ask.’
What is disturbing here is not Patterson’s candor, but her total lack of judgment. Zardari may be a willing creature of Washington, but the intense hatred for him in Pakistan is not confined to his political opponents. He is despised principally because of his venality. He has carried on from where he left off as minister of investment in his late wife’s second government. Within weeks of occupying President’s House, his minions were ringing the country’s top businessmen, demanding a share of their profits.
Take the case of Mr X, who owns one of the country’s largest banks. He got a call. Apparently the president wanted to know why his bank had sacked a PPP member soon after Benazir Bhutto’s fall in the late 1990s. X said he would find out and let them know. It emerged that the sacked clerk had been caught with his fingers literally in the till. President’s House was informed. The explanation was rejected. The banker was told that the clerk had been victimized for political reasons. The man had to be reinstated and his salary over the last 18 years paid in full together with the interest due. The PPP had also to be compensated and would expect a cheque (the sum was specified) soon. Where the president leads, his retainers follow. Many members of the cabinet and their progeny are busy milking businessmen and foreign companies.
‘If they can do it, so can we’ is a widely expressed view in Karachi, the country’s largest city. Muggings, burglaries, murders, many of them part of protection rackets linked to politicians, have made it the Naples of the East. A complete failure by the venal Pakistan elite to educate and provide a social safety net for its citizens makes it easier for religious extremists who remain a tiny minority but gain ground because of the war in neighboring Afghanistan. Rachman writes:
“Personally, I have been having cold feet myself and wondering whether the West should pull out of a losing battle in Afghanistan. But Rashid paints a hair-raising picture of what would happen if the US stepped away. He foresees a renewed civil war in Afghanistan, with the Afghan Taliban backed by the Pakistani army, battling it out with the forces of Karzai and the Northern Alliance, backed by Iran. Taking a step further back, the Chinese would be standing in the Afghan-Pakistani- Talib corner, while the Indians backed the other side. The Pakistanis meanwhile would find themselves suffering from the Taliban blowback, caused by the very Afghan war they were sponsoring. It doesn’t sound great. But how long is Nato prepared to stay in the ring?”
I’m glad that Rachman has been getting cold feet. He’s not alone. The picture Rashid paints is deliberately alarmist and based largely on fantasy; throwing in China is crude but designed to appeal to the revanchists in the Pentagon. Rashid does need help. How can the West cure poor Ahmed’s depression? He would recover rapidly if the US remained permanently in Afghanistan and took over Pakistan as well but that would require half-a-million US troops and the killing of a million or more Af-Paks. It’s a heavy price to pay for making Rashid feel better. A simpler route might be to get Zardari to give him a big job, failing which, he could move to the UN since Galbraith’s job is vacant. I remember Rashid in the old days being extremely sceptical when, after attending a conference in the Soviet Union in 1985, I told him that Gorbachev was going to pull out all Russian troops within a few years. He found that, too, difficult to believe and was, no doubt, equally depressed.
Some of us have been arguing for many years that more troops and more Afghan deaths is totally counter-productive. An exit strategy that involves Iran, Russia and China as well as Pakistan and a national coalition in Afghanistan is the only medium-term solution. Washington has been negotiating privately with the Pashtun resistance and the neo-Taliban have made it clear that once a NATO withdrawal began they would work with other groups and participate in a national government.
Meanwhile the war continues and Afghans and NATO soldiers continue to die. All one can offer them is Kipling’s advice to British soldiers (including Winston Churchill) who were battling the Pashtuns in the late 19th century

Pakistanis see US as biggest threat..

UPDATED ON:Monday, August 10, 2009 05:42 Mecca time, 02:42 GMT

AL JAZEERA EXCLUSIVE GALLUP PAKISTAN POLL
Pakistanis see US as biggest threat
By Owen Fay
About 43 per cent of Pakistanis support dialogue with the Taliban, the survey said [AFP]A survey commissioned by Al Jazeera in Pakistan has revealed a widespread disenchantment with the United States for interfering with what most people consider internal Pakistani affairs.
The polling was conducted by Gallup Pakistan, an affiliate of the Gallup International polling group, and more than 2,600 people took part.
Interviews were conducted across the political spectrum in all four of the country's provinces, and represented men and women of every economic and ethnic background.When respondents were asked what they consider to be the biggest threat to the nation of Pakistan, 11 per cent of the population identified the Taliban fighters, who have been blamed for scores of deadly bomb attacks across the country in recent years.Another 18 per cent said that they believe that the greatest threat came from neighbouring India, which has fought three wars with Pakistan since partition in 1947.But an overwhelming number, 59 per cent of respondents, said the greatest threat to Pakistan right now is, in fact, the US, a donor of considerable amounts of military and development aid.Tackling the TalibanThe resentment was made clearer when residents were asked about the Pakistan's military efforts to tackle the Taliban.
Keeping with recent trends a growing number of people, now 41 per cent, supported the campaign.
About 24 per cent of people remained opposed, while another 22 per cent of Pakistanis remained neutral on the question..............When people were asked if they would support government-sanctioned dialogue with Taliban fighters if it were a viable option the numbers change significantly.Although the same 41 per cent said they would still support the military offensive, the number of those supporting dialogue leaps up to 43 per cent.
So clearly, Pakistanis are, right now, fairly evenly split on how to deal with the Taliban threat.
Drone anger
However, when asked if they support or oppose the US military's drone attacks against what Washington claims are Taliban and al-Qaeda targets, only nine per cent of respondents reacted favourably.
A massive 67 per cent say they oppose US military operations on Pakistani soil.
Forty-one per cent of Pakistanis say they support the offensive against the Taliban
"This is a fact that the hatred against the US is growing very quickly, mainly because of these drone attacks," Makhdoom Babar, the editor-in-chief of Pakistan's The Daily Mail newspaper, said.
"Maybe the intelligence channels, the military channels consider it productive, but for the general public it is controversial ... the drone attacks are causing collateral damage," he told Al Jazeera.........................Lieutenant-General Hamid Nawaz Khan, a former caretaker interior minister of Pakistan, told Al Jazeera that US pressure on Pakistan to take on the Taliban was one reason for the backlash.
"Americans have forced us to fight this 'war on terror'... whatever Americans wanted they have been able to get because this government was too weak to resist any of the American vultures and they have been actually committing themselves on the side of America much more than what even [former president] Pervez Musharraf did," he said.
Pakistani leadership
The consensus of opinion in opposition to US military involvement in Pakistan is notable given the fact that on a raft of internal issues there is a clear level of disagreement, something which would be expected in a country of this size.
When asked for their opinions on Asif Ali Zardari, the current Pakistani president, 42 per cent of respondents said they believed he was doing a bad job. Around 11 per cent approved of his leadership, and another 34 per cent had no strong opinion either way.That pattern was reflected in a question about Zardari's Pakistan People's party (PPP).Respondents were asked if they thought the PPP was good or bad for the country.
About 38 per cent said the PPP was bad for the country, 20 per cent believed it was good for the country and another 30 per cent said they had no strong opinion.
Respondents were even more fractured when asked for their views on how the country should be led.
By far, the largest percentage would opt for Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister and leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) party, as leader. At least 38 per cent backed him to run Pakistan.Last month, the Pakistani supreme court quashed Sharif's conviction on charges of hijacking, opening the way for him to run for political office again. Zardari 'unpopular'
Zardari, the widower of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, received only nine per cent support, while Reza Gilani, Pakistan's prime minister, had the backing of 13 per cent.
The survey suggests Sharif is Pakistan's most popular politician by some distance [AFP]But from there, opinions vary greatly. Eight per cent of the population would support a military government, 11 per cent back a political coalition of the PPP and the PML-N party.
Another six per cent would throw their support behind religious parties and the remaining 15 per cent would either back smaller groups or simply do not have an opinion.Babar told Al Jazeera that Zardari's unpopularity was understandable given the challenges that the country had faced since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US.
"Any president in Pakistan would be having the same popularity that President Zardari is having, because under this situation the president of Pakistan has to take a lot of unpopular decisions," he said.
"He is in no position to not take unpopular decisions that are actually in the wider interests of the country, but for common people these are very unpopular decisions."
For the complete poll results, click here.

Zardari vows to expand war beyond Swat.

It is clear that Zardari has now pledged himself entirely to US policy goals. It remains to be seen if he can survive the results. The country is now plunged into civil war in the border tribal areas. Given the economic situation in Pakistan the country is becoming ever more dependent upon bailouts and the US aid probably trumps any considerations of national interest that might run counter to US policy. The result is already a humanitarian disaster added to an economic disaster. Probably the military will be successful in the short run but even that is not assured. The Taliban will no doubt have already infiltrated refugee camps and will no doubt step up terrorist actions in other parts of Pakistan.


News From Antiwar.com - http://news.antiwar.com -
Zardari Vows to Expand War Beyond Swat
Posted By Jason Ditz
Hot on the heels of military reports that the offensive against the Swat Valley had killed over 1,000 “suspected insurgents,” President Asif Ali Zardari has ominously declared that “Swat is just the start.” Zardari is now soliciting international donors for billions of dollars to expand the war across the tribal areas, and seemingly across the entire 2,400 km border with Afghanistan.
The military offensive in the Swat Valley has driven more than a million people from their homes, and killed an undisclosed number of civilians. The true extent of the damage in the Swat Valley has been largely obscured as the military has banned journalists from the area.
Nevertheless, officials have touted the success of the operation, even as Zardari appears eager to see the humanitarian crisis repeated across the nation’s entire frontier. Interior Minister Rehman Malik claimed today that the Dir and Buner Districts are now under complete military control and it was safe for refugees to return home. Despite this, media reports continued bombardment of Upper Dir, which has caused multiple civilian casualties.
Copyright © 2009 News From Antiwar.com. All rights reserved.

Pakistan in Turmoil over Sharif Bans

This is from antiwar.com.

This is totally bizarre. Just read the incident upon which the decision was made. It was associated with an attempt by Sharif to stop Musharraf's coup! Of course Sharif left a coalition with Zardari''s govt. because of their refusal to re-instate judges kicked out by Musharraf!
This is the worst sort of political manipulation and it remains to be seen whether the Zardari govt. will even survive.






Pakistan in Turmoil Over Sharif Bans
Protests in Pakistan, Stock Market Tumbles Over Political Confrontation
Posted February 25, 2009
Protests were sparked across Pakistan today when the Supreme Court decided that Nawaz Sharif, former prime minister and opposition leader, as well as his younger brother Shahbaz were ineligible to hold public offices. The ruling brought down the Punjabi Provincial government, which Shahbaz was chief minister of, and placed the province under direct national control.
Enraged supporters of the Pakistani Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) burned tires in the streets, and the stock market plummeted over 5% in a single trading session as the ban on some of the most influential opposition figures in the nation.
Sharif’s PML-N was part of a coalition government briefly after the 2008 election, but left in August when the ruling Pakistani Peoples Party (PPP) reneged on a promise to reinstate judges ousted by former President Pervez Musharraf. PML-N officials slammed the ruling as a political move by President Asif Ali Zardari, leader of the PPP.
Zardari spokesman Farhatullah Babar claimed that the PML-N was exploiting the decision to derail national unity, and urged the Sharif brothers to “control their supporters in the interest of democracy.” The ban was connected to an incident during the 1999 coup that brought Gen. Musharraf to power: then Prime Minister Sharif attempted to foil the coup by ordering Musharraf’s aircraft diverted. After Musharraf seized power, he had Sharif convicted of “hijacking” over the incident.

Zardari: World safer place because of Bush

Zardari obviously wants to curry favor with the U.S. Zardari is famous for getting his cut of everything. Maybe he wants to increase the flow of U.S. aid. For now the U.S. and NATO seem to be confining their actions in Pakistan to drone operations although there have been some reports of more helicopter overflights. It remains to be seen if Zardari will be able to create any sort of stable government in Pakistan. In some border areas the army is pursuing an offence against militants but this has driven many over the border into Afghanistan. Some militants may have gone with them.

World safer place because of Bush’
* Zardari warns ‘the axis of evil is growing’ * Afghan president says world community should have paid more attention to FATABy Khalid HasanNEW YORK: President Asif Ali Zardari has said that the world is a ‘safer place’ because of President George W Bush’s leadership, adding, “It could have been much worse.”In an interview published by the Washington Post on Saturday, Zardari warned that “the axis of evil is growing”, but did not specify who constituted that ‘axis’. He denied that Pakistan had fired at two United States helicopters that had strayed into Pakistani territory from Afghanistan, saying that only warning flares had been fired, contradicting what Admiral Michael Mullen has alleged.Zardari said Pakistan has the opportunity to ‘do the job’ and has the ‘right credentials’ and so has he, having been through a ‘tough life’ that has prepared him ‘to become even tougher’.Attention: In another interview published by the Washington Post, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said there are Taliban sanctuaries ‘in the region’, while agreeing with the interviewer that the international community and the West should have paid more attention to the Tribal Areas. “They should have done all that was needed to be done — political, diplomatic, the right concentration. All those areas where the training (was taking place),” he added. Asked if former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf had tried “quite a few options and if they had all failed”, the Afghan president replied, “Maybe he did try, but we did not see the results. Karzai went on to say, “I have faith in Zardari, and I am sure he will deliver. I am hearing good things about Gen Kayani as well. Afghanistan will do everything to give them a sense of confidence.”

Bomb a warning to end Pakistan-US co-operation

The US seems not to care that it is escalating the conflict in Pakistan and may cause civil war. Perhaps the war is already beginning. The plan may be to have the embattled Pakistani government ask for U.S. or NATO aid in battling its opposition. Of course the opposition involves many more than the Taliban. Zardari refused to re-instate all of the justices fired by Musharraf and this resulted in the breakup of his coalition with Sharif. Who knows how many CIA chiefs were in the hotel during this blast. We will probably never know nor know what there fate was.
One thing is sure and that is that there will be more instability and bloodshed in Pakistan.

Bomb a warning to end Pakistan-US cooperation
Marriott bomb seen as warning to Pakistan to end cooperation with US on fighting militants
KATHY GANNONAP News
Sep 20, 2008 19:13 EST
The brazen truck-bombing of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad Saturday is a warning from Islamic militants to Pakistan's new civilian leadership that it should end already-strained cooperation with the United States to pursue al-Qaida and the Taliban, analysts said.


The massive bomb targeting an American hotel chain killed at least 40 people and wounded hundreds, setting a fire that blazed for hours and gutted most of the five-story luxury hotel.
"The attack on the hotel is a message to the Pakistani leadership: End all cooperation with the Americans or pay the price," said Brian Glyn Williams, associate professor of Islamic history at the University of Massachusetts. "Both sides see Pakistan as a vital battlefield in their global struggle and clearly Pakistani civilians are paying the price for being in the middle of this struggle," he told The Associated Press.
The U.S. has angered Pakistanis with increasing cross-border raids by its forces from Afghanistan to root out Islamic militants entrenched in the lawless and rugged tribal regions along the border.
Local newspapers are filled with outrage from columnists who accuse the United States of treating Pakistan as a surrogate, flaunting its sovereignty and killing innocents. Civilian casualties from the U.S. assaults have prompted tribesmen in the volatile frontier to threaten revolt.
Williams said the country's new leaders are caught between pressure from the U.S. to crack down on the militants and al-Qaida demands that they cut all ties with America.
Officials have harshly criticized U.S. incursions into Pakistani airspace and last week, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited Pakistan to try to calm the anger.
At the same time, the government is also talking tough to the other side.
Just hours before the suicide bombing, Pakistan's newly elected President Asif Zardari vowed to wage war against extremists who have been battling government troops in the violent northwest. Osama bin Laden and his top deputies are believed to be hiding in the border region and the U.S. claims al-Qaida and the Taliban have found a safe haven to regroup there.
Zardari has received several threats from al Qaida and the Taliban, who are suspected of assassinating his wife, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, in December.
Last month al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri accused Pakistan's new leaders of acting on behalf of the United States and called on his followers to rise up against them.
"Let there be no doubt in your minds that the dominant political forces at work in Pakistan today are competing to appease and please the modern day crusaders in the White House and are working to destabilize this nuclear-capable nation under the aegis of America," said an audio message purported to be from al-Zawahri.
The militant groups that operate in Pakistan's northwest are a ferocious and disparate group.
The Pakistani Taliban operate under the umbrella group, Tehrik-e-Taliban, which was established last December. It used a tried and tested strategy to gain control of the area — promising to restore law and order.
Within months of taking control, the Pakistani Taliban then terrorizes the local population with public beheadings. Occasionally men accused of spying for the United States are taken to the center of the village and publicly beheaded. Taliban fighters often make videos of the gruesome beheadings that circulate in the markets in northwest Pakistan.
Daniel Markey, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former State Department official, questioned the government's ability to wage a successful battle without overhauling Pakistan's intelligence service, which is often accused of aiding and abetting the militants.
"They are able to fight but not able to win without a lot of changes," he said. "Most will have to be done by the Pakistani army and (intelligence), some by civilian government, and some that would need outside assistance," Markey added.

Eric Margolis: Zardari is the New Musharraf

Zardari probably will not last long. Pakistan may even face civil war. Margolis does not mention that even the US intelligence community warned against these raids. Zardari is corrupt as can be and did not keep his promise to restore all the justices resulting in the departure of Shariz from the coalition government. By signing a nuclear deal with India the U.S. is also alienating Pakistan. Should the U.S. further show its displeasure with Pakistan by cutting off aid no doubt China, Iran, and Russia are waiting in the wings to establish better ties with Pakistan. Discussion of what is happening in the U.S. seems almost nil.


Zardari is the New MusharrafBy Eric S. Margolis 15/09/08 "Khaleej Times" -- - The US has been in a bizarre state of semi-war against its ‘ally’ Pakistan for months, launching covert ground and air raids into its territory while claiming to be a close ally of Islamabad in the so-called war on terror.This week, it was revealed that President George Bush has given the Pentagon the green light to launch major ground attacks inside Pakistan’s tribal territory.Pakistan, first under the US-backed dictator Pervez Musharraf, and now the new, US-backed president, Asif Zardari, has been put in the impossible position of waging a small war at the behest of Washington against its own pro-Taleban Pashtun tribesmen in the frontier zones known as FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) that is bitterly opposed by most Pakistanis and regarded by many as treasonous.Zardari, the widower of the late Benazir Bhutto, is inheriting this dangerous problem and a host of other ones. Pakistan is almost bankrupt, with less than eight weeks of hard currency reserves to pay for vital imports of food and fuel. Half of Pakistan’s 165 million people live on less than $2 daily.Financial and political support from Washington helped engineer Zardari into power. He has been put in charge of the millions a month in overt and secret cash flow from Washington — $11.2 billion officially since 2001 — that Musharraf used to buy influence. Contrary to Washington’s claims it was neutral in the race between Zardari and his rival, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Washington spent a great deal of money and energy trying to sideline Nawaz, who has long been unpopular in Washington as insufficiently responsive to US interests. Zardari became notorious as ‘Mr. 10 per cent’ when he was minister of public contracts during his wife’s tenure as prime minister. Zardari claims all the corruption charges against him were politically motivated and denies any wrongdoing. But many Pakistanis, particularly in the powerful armed forces, are not happy seeing as their new prime minister a man of dubious reputation and a penchant for personal excess. Even so, Zardari has apparently assumed all of the sweeping powers held by former president Musharraf. Now that Zardari is seen as Washington’s new Musharraf, these charges against him will redouble. Few outside his People’s Party see Zardari as an ideal choice for Pakistan’s leader in a time of growing crisis, but he may yet rise to the occasion. He has certainly pleased Washington by vowing to prosecute the internal war against pro-Taleban tribesmen and aid the US-led war in Afghanistan. Rising violence along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border threatens a far wider crisis. There have been frequent clashes between Pakistan paramilitary units and US forces attacking inside FATA. A major overt US commando raid against a Pashtun village inside Pakistan killed up to 20 civilians last week and brought threats from Pakistan’s chief of staff, Gen. Afshaq Kayani, the 650,000-man armed forces would fight to defend the nation’s territory.Deeply frustrated by the failure of its war in Afghanistan and inability to defeat Taleban, the Bush administration wants to expand the war into Pakistan tribal areas which are supposedly serving as a base for the Afghan resistance to western occupation. The Pentagon’s influential Special Operations Command, whose senior ranks hold a number of militant Christian fundamentalists, leads the effort to expand the war into Pakistan. Once again, arrogance and ignorance are misleading the US into another misfortune. Increased US incursions into FATA will almost certainly arouse most of the Pashtun tribes to resist the attackers and eventually involve units of the regular Pakistani armed forces. Pashtuns, 20 per cent of Pakistan’s population, are heavily represented in the higher ranks of the military and intelligence service, ISI.US attacks will inevitably produce ‘mission creep,’ as American forces are sucked ever deeper into Pakistan. Worse, continuing US attacks on FATA could provoke a major Pashtun tribal uprising and re-ignite a simmering secessionist movement for an independent ‘Pashtunistan’ in the strategic northwest frontier that could tear always fragile Pakistan apart and invite Indian intervention as occurred in East Pakistan in 1971. This explosive issue is barely understood in Washington. Meanwhile, Pakistan is a ticking time bomb and the new Zardari government appears headed into a storm of instability and growing opposition. Eric S Margolis is a veteran American journalist who reported from the Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan in the ‘80s and ‘90s

Purge of Bhutto Allies Raises Further Questions about Zardari

It looks as if Pakistan could be in for more political unrest. Zardari seems to be a rather dubious character and quite corrupt. He promised Sharif that he would re-instate all the lawyers Musharraf had fired but did not do so. This is part of the reason Sharif left the coalition govt. I wonder where the U.S. fits into all this. Apparently there have been recent meetings between U.S. and army brass.

Purge of Bhutto Allies Raises Further Questions About Zardari
Posted August 30, 2008
Updated 8/30 8:45 PM EST
Less than a week after losing their largest coalition partner the Pakistani Peoples Party’s internal stability has been called into question, amid reports that acting party leader and presumptive future President of Pakistan Asif Ali Zardari has purged many of assassinated former leader Benazir Bhutto’s closest allies from the upper ranks of the party.
Close Zardari ally Zulfiqar Mirza reportedly blamed Naheed Khan, one of Bhutto’s most loyal allies, for the assassination, claiming she was in charge of security and had declined an offer of volunteer guards at the incident. Khan denied the charge, and insisted that Mirza and Interior Minister Rehman Malik were actually in charge of security during the incident. Last year, Pakistani police raided Mirza’s home in a failed attempt to arrest him for his connection to the murder of Sajjad Hussain, who was killed three days before he was scheduled to testify against Zardari on corruption charges.
The Times quoted Khan and other Bhutto loyalists as saying Zardari had wasted the past six months, and she also warned that party workers were growing increasingly disillusioned at their lack of access to him.
Though Bhutto’s son Bilawal was named as her successor, Zardari has emerged as the de facto party leader while Bilawal is in Britain finishing college. The PPP won a plurality in the February election, and formed a coalition government with Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N party. That coalition was shattered earlier this week when Zardari refused to reinstate 60 ousted judges before Sharif’s Monday deadline, despite an earlier signed promise to do so.
Though the PPP was expected to retain its control over the Pakistani government even without the PML-N, the incidents have added yet more doubts among Pakistanis of Zardari’s suitability for the office of President. He is still widely referred to as “Mr. 10 Percent” in Pakistan because of allegations that he stole millions of dollars during his tenure as Minister of Investment. The Swiss Government had kept some $60 million in Zardari’s assets frozen since 1997 in connection to the allegations, which it released after Zardari’s government informed them that the incident was no longer under investigation. Zardari spent 11 years in prison in connection with corruption charges, and doctors report that he has suffered from severe depression, dementia, and PTSD in connection with his incarceration.
Still, Zardari is expected to prevail in Pakistan’s Presidential election, to be held a week from today. He is one of three candidates for the position, as Sharif’s party is fielding former Supreme Court Chief Justice Saeed-uz-Zaman Siddiqui, while the PML-Q, the ruling party during Musharraf’s tenure, is running Senator Mushahid Hussain Syed.
Still, with his coalition in tatters, his party increasingly divided, and even his own family attacking him publicly, it is unclear how effective a leader he will be, or how long he can maintain his grip on power.

Pakistan coalition breaks apart..

This is not surprising. As the article notes Zardari has broken several key parts of the agreement that formed the coalition. He chose the presential candidate without consultation and has not agreed upon re-instatement of the lawyers and chief justice who were dismissed by Mussharaf. While Zardari may be able to govern as a minority or obtain enough support to survive from smaller parties the political situation seems to be becoming more unstable. This is from the NY Times.


August 26, 2008
Fractious Coalition in Pakistan Breaks Apart
By JANE PERLEZ
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The five-month-old coalition government in Pakistan collapsed Monday when the head of the minority party, Nawaz Sharif, announced his members would leave the fractious alliance, citing broken promises by Asif Ali Zardari, the leader of the majority party.
“We have been forced to leave the coalition,” Mr. Sharif said in Islamabad. “We joined the coalition with full sincerity for the restoration of democracy. Unfortunately all the promises were not honored.”
The exit by Mr. Sharif’s party, the Pakistan Muslim League-N, had been expected in the last few days, and was finally spurred by the decision of Mr. Zardari to run for president, in an electoral college vote set for Sept. 6. President Pervez Musharraf resigned last week under threat of impeachment.
The departure of Mr. Sharif, whose party sat uneasily with Mr. Zardari’s Pakistan Peoples Party, is unlikely to result in immediate elections. Mr. Sharif said his members would sit in the opposition in the Parliament and try to play a “constructive” role.
The Pakistan Peoples Party holds the most seats in the Parliament, but not a majority. Political analysts said they expected it would be able to cobble together a new parliamentary coalition with smaller parties.
Still, Pakistan faces continued political instability that may distract from serious governance and serious efforts to turn back the growing strength of the Taliban in the northwestern parts of the nation.
The main problem between Mr. Sharif and Mr. Zardari was a profound disagreement over the future of the former chief justice, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, who was fired by President Musharraf in March 2007, reinstated by the court in July, and placed under house arrest in November. He was finally freed in March of this year, but has yet to be restored to the bench.
Mr. Sharif has insisted that Mr. Chaudhry along with some 60 other judges, who were also fired in November, when Mr. Musharraf declared emergency rule, should be restored to the bench.
To drive home the point about broken promises, Mr. Sharif, a former two-time prime minister, released an accord signed by the two men on Aug. 7.
The document shows that Mr. Zardari and Mr. Sharif agreed that all the judges would be restored by an executive order one day after Mr. Musharraf’s impeachment or resignation. But Mr. Zardari stalled.
In an interview with the BBC Urdu-language radio service on Saturday, Mr. Zardari defended his position, saying agreements with the Pakistan Muslim League-N were not “holy like the holy Koran.”
The Aug. 7 accord, signed as the two parties maneuvered to force Mr. Musharraf out, also said the two men would agree on a presidential candidate.
Instead, according to Mr. Sharif’s aides, Mr. Zardari went ahead to plan his own candidacy for the presidency, and arranged for the election to be held on Sept. 6 without consulting Mr. Sharif.
At the news conference in Islamabad, Mr. Sharif introduced his party’s candidate for president, Saeed-uz-zaman Siddiqui, a former chief justice. Mr. Siddiqui refused to take the oath of office to remain as chief justice after Mr. Musharraf took power from Mr. Sharif in a bloodless coup in 1999.
The presidential vote polls the national Parliament and four provincial assemblies. It is expected that Mr. Zardari will prevail.
There was no immediate official reaction from the Pakistan Peoples Party on the collapse of the coalition.
But a member of Parliament from the party, Fauzia Wahab, said the party would “conveniently and easily survive” without the support of the Pakistan Muslim League-N. She criticized Mr. Sharif for “holding the system hostage of one man,” meaning Mr. Chaudhry.
Mr. Zardari, the widower of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in December, has consistently opposed the reappointment of Mr. Chaudhry since the coalition came together after Feb. 18 parliamentary elections.
The basis of Mr. Zardari’s objection appears grounded in a fear that the judge would undo the amnesty granted to Mr. Zardari on corruption charges when he returned to Pakistan on the death of his wife after years in exile.
Mr. Zardari served in government in the 1990s, when Ms. Bhutto was twice prime minister in the 1990s. He spent more than eight years in jail on various corruption charges that were dropped on his return and which he says were politically motivated.
In the week since Mr. Musharraf resigned, Mr. Zardari has emerged as the chief political force in Pakistan, and he appears to have the backing of the Bush administration as he drives forward toward the presidency.
In the past two days, Mr. Zardari’s statements have increasingly coincided with Washington’s policies, particularly on the campaign against terror, the United States’ central concern here.
In the BBC radio interview, Mr. Zardari used unusually strong words against the Taliban, whose presence in Pakistan’s tribal areas has gathered steam in the last year. “The world is losing the war,” he said of the fight against the Taliban. “I think at the moment they definitely have the upper hand.”
Mr. Zardari said in the interview the Tehrik-i-Taliban, an umbrella group of the Taliban in Pakistan, should be banned. On Monday, the Interior Ministry announced the group would be added to the list of banned organizations. Other Islamic extremist groups are on the Interior Ministry’s list, but the listing appears to have had little effect.
Several months ago, the government in the North-West Frontier Province, which is allied with Mr. Zardari’s party, signed a peace agreement with an Islamic extremist group, in the province’s Swat Valley. That accord is now broken and the Pakistani Army has been fighting the group for the last several weeks.
Salman Masood contributed reporting.

Pakistan coalition breaks up over deposed judges issue.

This is from the Washington Post.
It seems that Zardari is not that anxious to restore the ousted judges and demote those promoted by Musharraf. Of course Zardari might come under legal scrutiny again if Chaudry were restored as chief justice. Who knows maybe there will be a deal with Musharraf and the PPP after all! Sharif has been a consistent supporter of the ousted justices.


Pakistani Party Quits Cabinet Over JusticesSharif Pulls Out After Talks Break Down
By Pamela ConstableWashington Post Foreign ServiceTuesday, May 13, 2008; A10
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, May 12 -- Pakistan's fragile governing coalition cracked open Monday as one of its major parties withdrew from the cabinet, less than three months after elections that had united rival factions opposed to President Pervez Musharraf.
Nawaz Sharif, leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-N, announced that his party would leave all federal posts after talks broke down with the Pakistan People's Party over how to restore the country's former chief justice and 60 other judges who had been fired in November by Musharraf, Pakistan's military ruler at the time.
Sharif, a former prime minister, said his party would remain in Parliament and had no desire to damage the government or the country. Looking grim and exhausted after days of negotiations, he told journalists that his decision was a "bitter pill, but we had to do it . . . we do not want to destabilize the democratic process."
The split was seen by analysts as a significant blow to Pakistan's progress toward mature democratic rule and a deep disappointment to the public, which ousted Musharraf's party at the polls in February and had demanded the restoration of the judges during months of unprecedented civic protests.
Analysts also said the judicial dispute -- and by extension, the question of Musharraf's future -- would now likely drag on, distracting the new government from addressing more important national problems, especially battling radical Islamist fighters and rebuilding the badly ailing economy.
"This is a huge setback for the government," said Shuja Nawaz, a Pakistani security analyst based in Washington. He noted that Sharif's pullout may give Musharraf a chance to reassert his political strength. "This crisis will distract attention from critical issues, and the real losers will be the people of Pakistan," he said.
For the past month, Pakistanis watched with sinking hopes while Sharif and his archrival, Pakistan People's Party leader Asif Ali Zardari, held three rounds of negotiations over the judicial dispute.
Sharif set Monday as a final deadline for Zardari to agree on a plan to restore the dismissed judges and bring the matter to Parliament. But Zardari, who took his post after the December assassination of his wife, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, has been more ambivalent about the judges. He has said that the courts had failed to help him when he spent a decade in jail on unproven corruption charges.
A final round of talks between the two in London broke off with no agreement over the weekend, even after the top U.S. regional diplomat met there separately with both men and privately urged them to reconcile. Sharif, who was overthrown by Musharraf in 1999, insisted on a plan to bring back the ousted judges and demote those who took the oath of office under Musharraf's rule; Zardari, who benefited politically and legally from Musharraf's court purge, insisted that the president's appointed judges keep their full powers.
Public opinion here has tended to blame Zardari for being intransigent. Sharif, despite the potential damage from his cabinet pullout, is widely seen as having taken the moral high ground on an issue that drew an unprecedented public outcry here last year and quickly became a first major test for Pakistan's new government.
"This is a defining moment for Pakistan," said Ehsan Iqbal, a top aide to Sharif and one of nine cabinet members from the Muslim League who will leave his post Tuesday. "Without the rule of law, without an independent judiciary, the country cannot move ahead democratically or constitutionally."
In Washington, the State Department said the makeup of the Pakistani government would not affect bilateral cooperation. "How they arrange themselves politically, the platform of the government, those are going to be decisions for the Pakistani government to make," spokesman Sean McCormack said.
But diplomatic sources here said there was frustration among Pakistan's Western allies that the civilian leadership had failed to resolve the judicial issue at a time of pressing national problems.
Leaders of the People's Party took pains to say they would continue to work with others to prevent any systemic breakdown. Sherry Rehman, federal information minister, said Monday that there was no danger of a government collapse and that her party would not retaliate against Sharif by walking out of the politically powerful Punjab provincial government.
"Our aim is to soften the fallout from all this," Rehman said in an interview. "We regret that they are leaving the coalition, but we will continue our working relationship. We can't afford a constitutional crisis."
The rift between Zardari and Sharif leaves unresolved a second, more significant power struggle between Musharraf and the former chief justice, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry. Chaudhry, an iconoclastic figure, challenged Musharraf in a society where judges have traditionally deferred to the military. Musharraf tried to fire him twice and declared a state of emergency last November while the high court was preparing to rule on the legality of his presidency.
Although Musharraf doffed his uniform in December and had been seen as wielding less power in recent months, Monday's political breakdown could give him more room to reassert himself as a power broker, analysts said. As a civilian president, he has the authority to dissolve Parliament and appoint military commanders.
Ultimately, the greatest threat to Pakistan's political evolution is the possibility of military intervention. So far, the new army chief has shown no interest in politics. But if renewed protests should erupt over the judicial dispute, food and fuel prices should continue to rise, or civilian authorities should fail to address the rising threat of violent extremism, some fear the army could be tempted to take over, as it has done before.
"At the end of the day, what's at stake here is the civil-military balance," said Babar Sattar, a lawyer and columnist who has written extensively about the judicial issue. "Does the army have an intervention streak, or does it step in because nothing else works? This infighting between politicians, so soon after eight years of military dictatorship, is a very big mistake."
Staff writer Robin Wright in Washington contributed to this report.

Benazir's son, husband hold key to legacy

This is from the Khaleej Times. Bhutto's husband sounds like a prime candidate to visit the Bush ranch at Crawford Texas. Maybe he could become part of the circle of crony capitalists around Bush and his crew.

Benazir’s son, husband hold key to legacy
(AFP)

30 December 2007



ISLAMABAD - The son and husband of Benazir Bhutto are among the main contenders for the leadership of the slain Pakistani opposition leader’s party, which is likely to be decided Sunday.


A senior aide to Bhutto said the former premier’s son was not keen to enter politics yet, leading to speculation that her widower Asif Ali Zardari could effectively take charge of the party until he is older.

Whatever the outcome, both will remain key figures in the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) founded four decades ago by Bhutto’s father and now the crisis hit country’s biggest opposition group.

BILAWAL: At just 19, the mantle of the Bhutto family’s bloodstained legacy would lie heavy on the head of Benazir’s only son, Bilawal.

If picked for the top slot in the PPP he would be the third leader in its history after his mother and his grandfather, Zufilqar Ali Bhutto, who founded the party and was executed under martial law in 1979.

But he has already shown signs of following in his mother’s footsteps, enrolling earlier this year at Oxford University, where Benazir Bhutto was head of the prestigious Oxford Union debating society.

Bilawal -- meaning one without equal -- was born in September 1988, a month before his mother won general elections under military dictator Zia-ul-Haq to become Pakistan’s first female premier.

“I went back to sleep and woke up to the sound of a congratulatory gunshot being fired outside the hospital, the beating of drums and cries of “Jiye (Long Live) Bhutto. The most celebrated and politically controversial baby in the history of Pakistan had been born,” Bhutto said in her autobiography.

He and his two sisters went into exile with their mother in 1999, dividing their time between London and Dubai, where Bilawal attended school. Reports in local newspapers said he was keen on outdoor sports including target-shooting and horse riding.

At Benazir’s funeral on Friday he was pictured looking composed despite his grief, but analysts say he is currently too young to lead the party.

“Bilawal is just 19 years old, he needs to be groomed,” political analyst and retired general Talat Masood said.

“They should let him complete his education. When he is in a position to assume he should be given the mantle.”

ZARDARI: Nicknamed “Mr. Ten Percent” by Pakistanis because of allegations about kickbacks from his wife’s time in power, Asif Ali Zardari, 51, has gone from playboy to villain and now to grieving political widower.

When he married into the Bhutto political dynasty in 1987, Zardari, then 31, was the little known scion of a landowning polo-playing family from southern Sindh province.

He was born on July 21, 1956 in the rural Sindh district of Nawabshah and schooled in the commercial capital Karachi at the Saint Patrick High School, alma mater of President Pervez Musharraf.

He graduated from the Petaro Cadet College in 1972, an army-run institution known for its discipline and regimented life.

After their arranged marriage Zardari gradually carved out an influential position for himself under his wife’s two tenures in power.

But he was back behind bars within half an hour of the dismissal of Bhutto’s second government in 1996.

Zardari spent eight years in jail -- five of them while his family lived in exile -- before being freed in November 2004 after being cleared over the last of 17 cases of corruption, murder and drug smuggling.

His passion for thoroughbred horses was well known and landed into trouble. One of the charges against him was that he maintained a costly stable in the prime minister’s official residence in Islamabad at state expense.

“Zardari has a very tainted record. He may not consider himself suitable for the party leadership,” Masood said.

“He may leave it to some senior member to lead the party. It will be more appropriate for the party and for him.”



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