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Pakistan: Another U.S.-Made Disaster |
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The February
election in Pakistan makes no difference to U.S. and military dominance of
the country. The Pakistan army has never let any politician rule the state even
when they had a majority of the vote. No party won a majority in the February
vote, the biggest share of the 268 National Assembly seats going to the
Pakistan People's Party (PPP) (87) (whose leader Benazir Bhutto was
assassinated last December) and to its rival Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim
League (PML-N) (66). Such a weak and divided legislature will be no match for
the powerful military which will keep ruling the country under U.S. orders as
it has since 1947, playing off the politicians against each other. The victories
of PPP and PML (N) do not represent any major improvement for the Pakistani
people since both parties have proven to be corrupt U.S. puppets when they
have ruled the country in the past, and continue to be so. This is one reason
why 65% of the Pakistani electorate did not bother to vote in the election. The story of
the Bhuttos shows how the U.S. controls Pakistan not just through the
military but also through the emasculation of its political process. Benazir
Bhutto's assassination underlines the danger of being a U.S. puppet in
Pakistan, where competition for this post can be fierce within the national
ˇlite. Bhutto was sent back to Pakistan by U.S. President George Bush and
U.S. Secretary of State Condaleezza Rice last fall. She was told to provide
the hated military dictatorship of General Pervez Musharraf with a democratic
fa¨ade in the upcoming elections. With public
opposition to Musharraf mounting due to his declaration of martial law,
dismissal of the Supreme Court, arrest of thousands of opposition members,
and suppression of the media, this was the U.S. administration's latest
attempt to prolong his oppressive reign. Bhutto had always done the U.S.'s
bidding during her two terms as Pakistan's Prime Minister, but the problem
this time was that there already was a U.S. puppet ruling the country:
Musharraf. The General had no wish to share power with Bhutto, who he knew
could "out-puppet" him in terms of the extremes she would engage in
to please Pakistan's American master. This battle of U.S. clients could only
have one end: the better-armed and more ruthless one would win. Several
factors point to the involvement of the Pakistan military's intelligence
agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), in Bhutto's assassination; the
ISI, in turn, takes its orders from the CIA. As Milton Bearden, a former CIA
station chief in Pakistan, put it, "[Pakistan is] the only country in
South Asia that always did what we asked." The killing
took place at a political rally in Rawalpindi, a garrison town tightly
controlled by the Pakistan army, which has its headquarters here. Two
assassins were involved. The first was the shooter, who fired three shots at
Bhutto as she waved at supporters, her head emerging from the sun roof of her
Land Cruiser. One bullet hit Bhutto in the head, killing her. Then the second
assassin, who was standing behind the shooter, blew himself up with a bomb,
killing 20 people. Police abandoned many of their posts during the speeches,
leaving Bhutto with mainly private security guards to protect her. One hour
after the assassination, the authorities hosed down the crime scene, thus
destroying all potential evidence. No autopsy was performed on Bhutto's body.
Doctors who attended Bhutto in her last hours say that the government ordered
them to keep silent and to destroy records of her treatment. The weapon used
to kill Bhutto was a Steyr 9mm handgun, issued only to Pakistan Army Special
Forces. Musharraf
quickly blamed al-Qaeda for the murder. He came up with the bizarre
explanation that Bhutto died not from bullet wounds, but when the force of
the bomb caused her to hit her head on the lever of the Cruiser's sun roof.
Musharraf later added that she should not have emerged out of the sun roof,
thereby blaming her for her own murder. Given all
this, it is not surprising that in Pakistan, Musharraf, the ISI and the army
are widely blamed for the killing and that officials from Bhutto's Pakistan
People's Party accuse the government of covering up evidence of its
involvement in the assassination. Having received $10 billion in U.S.
military aid for being an ally in Washington's "war on terror," the
astoundingly corrupt and genocidal Pakistan military elite had no intention
of sharing its massive wealth and power with any civilian politician,
especially not one it had thrown out of power twice and whose father it had
hanged in 1979. Bhutto's
killing served U.S. objectives in Pakistan. The Bush administration wanted a
major increase in U.S. military operations in the country to expand its
"war on terror," and the murder of Pakistan's most prominent
politician, supposedly by al-Qaeda, gave Washington a pretext to carry out
this aim. As author William Engdahl explains, "Were Musharraf to agree
to the stationing of U.S. Special Forces inside Pakistan...the democratic
farce with Bhutto could be put aside in favour of the continued Musharraf
sole rule." Musharraf
agreed, of course. One day before Bhutto was shot, The Washington Post
reported in an article titled U.S. Troops to Head to Pakistan:
"Beginning early next year, U.S. Special Forces are expected to vastly
expand their presence in Pakistan, as part of an effort to train and support
indigenous counter-insurgency forces and clandestine counterterrorism units,
according to defense officials involved with the planning. These
Pakistan-centric operations will mark a shift for the U.S. military and for
U.S.-Pakistan relations. In the aftermath of Sept. 11, the U.S. used
Pakistani bases to stage movements into Afghanistan. Yet once the U.S.
deposed the Taliban government and established its main operating base at
Bagram, north of Kabul, U.S. forces left Pakistan almost entirely. "Since
then, Pakistan has restricted U.S. involvement in cross-border military
operations as well as paramilitary operations on its soil. But the Pentagon
has been frustrated by the inability of Pakistani national forces to control
the borders or the frontier area. And Pakistan's political instability has
heightened U.S. concern about Islamic extremists there. According to Pentagon
sources, reaching a different agreement with Pakistan became a priority for
the new head of the U.S. Special Operations Command, Admiral Eric T. Olson.
Olson visited Pakistan in August, November, and again this month, [December
2007], meeting with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf... Now, a new
agreement has been finalized. And the first U.S. personnel could be on the
ground in Pakistan by early in the New Year, [2008] according to Pentagon
sources." Only 50 U.S.
military personnel were present in Pakistan before this new agreement. Given
the fierce hatred of the U.S. government among the Pakistani people, a major
catastrophe attributable to al-Qaeda would be required to make a
significantly expanded American military presence in the country acceptable
to the public. The murder of Pakistan's leading politician certainly fit this
requirement. Some puppets are more useful dead than alive. However, the
Pakistani people do not believe that al-Qaeda killed Benazir. They blame the
ISI, which works closely with the CIA. So the CIA/ISI intelligence plan for
widening the U.S. war within Pakistan appears to have backfired: Bhutto's
killing only increased the Pakistani people's hatred of the U.S. and its
other client, Musharraf, instead of focusing public anger on al-Qaeda. All
over the country, people reacted to Bhutto's murder by burning government
offices. As Hassan Abbas, a former official in the Bhutto and Musharraf
governments, put it, "My view is that this [the assassination] was a combination
of elements from the intelligence agencies with people from the extremist
groups with whom they have working relationships." Abbas is author of
the book Pakistan's Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army and America's War
on Terror. The Taliban
and al-Qaeda were both set up by the CIA and ISI, and the agencies have
long-standing links with these and many other Islamic fundamentalists, whom
they have routinely used against secular progressive parties and movements in
Pakistan and other Muslim countries. The Western
mainstream media portrays Bhutto as a martyr for democracy, but she was far
from that. She returned to Pakistan not to promote democracy, but to serve
the U.S. by providing a fig-leaf of legitimacy for a murderous and corrupt
military dictatorship. Bhutto's own two tenures as Prime Minister (1988 to
1990 and 1993 to 1996), were also marked by autocratic rule, official
violence, and widespread corruption. She appointed her husband, Asif Zardari,
Minister for Investment and together they stole $1.5 billion from the public
treasury. She faced corruption charges in Spain and England, and was
convicted in Switzerland of money laundering and taking bribes. Zardari was
known as "Mr. Thirty Percent" in Bhutto's second term for demanding
"commissions" when granting government contracts. During this time,
security forces in Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city, killed thousands of
innocent people while fighting armed militants opposed to Bhutto. Bhutto's
violence extended even to her own family. While Prime Minister, she was
implicated in the murder of her brother, Murtaza, who was killed by police
outside his residence in Karachi in September 1996. Murtaza had denounced
Benazir's and Zardari's corruption and wanted to take the PPP in a left-wing
direction, thus making a split in the party likely. Benazir, who had declared
herself "Chairperson for life" of the party, would not tolerate any
opposition to her absolute rule. A judicial inquiry set up to investigate
Murtaza's murder concluded (without naming names) that the orders for it had
to have come from the highest official levels, thus making the culprit
obvious. Witnesses to the murder were arrested, but not the senior police
officers who carried it out. All this is particularly relevant now that the
PPP has returned to power led by the notorious crook Asif Zardari. Extreme
violence and corruption define the triumvirate that rules Pakistan: the U.S.
government and its proxies--the Pakistan army and the feudal land-owners. A
CIA agent called the Bhuttos "our feudals," and Benazir and her
father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, never rose above this shameful position. The
family owns vast tracts of land in Sindh province. Zulfiqar is credited with
being Pakistan's first democratically elected leader, but this is not true. He
was never elected Prime Minister of Pakistan, and only came to power by
encouraging the breakup of the country. Pakistan's
first national election, held in 1970, was won by Sheikh Mujib-ur-Rehman,
leader of the Awami League, a party dominant in East Pakistan. Mujib won all
but one of the seats in East Pakistan, which, with 55% of the population, had
more seats than West Pakistan. Mujib was thus Pakistan's first democratically
elected Prime Minister. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party won most
of the seats in West Pakistan, which made him leader of the opposition. This
was not good enough for Zulfiqar, who warned that he would "break the
legs" of anyone from West Pakistan who went to the eastern half for the
meeting of the National Assembly. Zulfiqar then
encouraged military action against Mujib and the majority ethnic Bengalis who
made up the population of the east. The army, which was dominated by the
Punjabi ethnic group (from Punjab province) had, of course, no intention of
handing power to the Bengalis--not just because they were ethnically
different, but also because they were left-wing, wanted autonomy, and would
have ended the military's control of the country. In March,
1971, the army unleashed a genocide on East Pakistan that killed up to three
million Bengalis in eight months. Zulfiqar was in Dhaka, East Pakistan's main
city, when the killing started. In his own words, he watched the city burn
from his hotel window and said, "Pakistan is saved." East Pakistan
was liberated from the Pakistan military's bloodbath by the Indian army,
which invaded the territory in December 1971 and defeated the Pakistani
troops in a week. East Pakistan then became the independent nation of
Bangladesh. The horrifying loss of half the country allowed Zulfiqar Ali
Bhutto to become Prime Minister of the remaining half in 1972. Thus Zulfiqar
became the leader of Pakistan not through elections, but due to the genocide
in which he was complicit. Once Prime
Minister, he personally continued the slaughter of civilians by sending the
army into Balochistan province in 1973. Like the Bengalis, the elected Baloch
provincial government also wanted autonomy. Bhutto dismissed this democratic
government and the army killed 5,000 Balochis and brutally tortured more than
4,500. The killing restored the military's confidence, which it had lost
after the East Pakistan defeat and, ironically, emboldened it to overthrow
Zulfiqar himself in 1977 and to hang him two years later. The army had no
more intention of sharing power with Zulfiqar than it did with Mujib (or
later with Benazir Bhutto). Benazir
continued her father's violent legacy, adding massive corruption to the
family misdeeds. She also encouraged the growth of religious fundamentalism
by helping create the Taliban in league with the ISI and CIA during her
second term. One of the main architects of the Taliban strategy was
Naseerullah Babar, Benazir's interior minister. The Bhuttos have long shared
with the army the desire to take over Afghanistan, which Benazir used the
Taliban to do. Thus Benazir had much to do with creating the religious
extremism that she decried on her return to Pakistan in 2007. The question
remains, though: why were the Bhuttos popular? Why did the people of West
Pakistan vote for them? The plausible answer is because Zulfiqar promised a
socialist system which he never delivered. The PPP's slogan was "Roti,
Kapra, aur Makan" ("Bread, Clothes and Housing" -- for the
people) but none of these amenities was provided. Instead, the people got
genocide, corruption, and dynastic despotism. Propping up
the Pakistan army and feudals like the Bhuttos is the U.S government, which
is the real power in Pakistan. Washington's destruction of the political
process in the country and its backing of one military dictatorship after
another has today brought the remaining western half of Pakistan to the brink
of disintegration. There are four different insurgencies raging in the
country that threaten to tear it apart. This is in addition to the now weekly
suicide bombings that killed 400 people in 2007. The insurgencies are located
in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) bordering Afghanistan, Swat
district in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), Gilgit (near the
Himalayas), and Balochistan province. The first two conflicts involve
Pashtuns fighting against the army. Pashtuns are the majority ethnic group in
the NWFP. The Baloch
struggle is the most significant one, as the province comprises 43% of
Pakistan's land area and holds most of its natural resources. It is rich in
oil, natural gas, coal, copper, gold, silver, platinum, aluminum, and
uranium. Also, a large part of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan are
launched from two American bases located in Balochistan. The province
declared independence 24 hours after Pakistan's creation in 1947, only to be
occupied by the latter's army in 1948. The Balochis, who form a distinct
ethnic group with their own language and culture, have long been oppressed by
the Punjabi-dominated army which has kept them the poorest people in Pakistan
and stolen their natural riches. Two-thirds (63%) of Balochis live below the
poverty line and only 2% have clean water. Natural gas from Balochistan is
crucial to Pakistan's economy, and the province produces more than 40% of the
country's primary energy (gas, coal and electricity); yet only 6% of Balochis
have access to gas and the province gets only 12.4% of the gas royalties due
to it. Given such
deprivation, there have been five Baloch insurgencies against the central
government since 1948, the latest one starting in 2005. Musharraf has
responded with what The Guardian (U.K.) calls a "scorched-earth military
campaign," killing more than 900 Balochis, displacing 140,000,
disappearing 450 political activists, and arresting 4,000 others. Many
detainees are tortured. "Musharraf's terror tactics," says The
Guardian, "include bombing and burning down more than 200 houses,
schools, and clinics. The often indiscriminate attacks on civilian
settlements... involve the deployment of heavy artillery, fighter aircraft,
and helicopter gunships." Mehran
Baloch, the Baloch representative to the United Nations Human Rights Council,
warns that "Pakistan is determined to kill the Baloch people and has
deployed its entire state machinery to crush and eliminate the Baloch nation.
This is state terrorism." According to Selig Harrison, the leading
Western expert on Balochistan, the Pakistan army's attack on the Balochis is
"slow-motion genocide." The Baloch people want independence, and
the well-armed and organized Baloch Liberation Army and other nationalist
groups have carried out hundreds of attacks on army units, police barracks,
oil and gas pipelines and railway tracks with mortars, rockets, and bombs.
Between January 3 and February 10, 2008, Baloch insurgents killed 54
Pakistani soldiers and blew up 11 gas pipelines and 17 electricity pylons.
The guerrilla war is pinning down entire army divisions and has stopped
industrial production in Punjab for long periods (due to gas service
interruptions). It is
unlikely that the Pakistan army will be able to crush this insurgency,
especially given the other three it also faces, as well as the frequent
suicide attacks. The military has similarly failed to defeat Pashtun
tribesmen near the Afghan border, where it has been fighting for five years
and lost 700 soldiers. The PPP's coming to power will worsen the situation
given its preference for violence in both East Pakistan and Balochistan. The perilous condition
of Pakistan is a direct result of Western imperialism. The creation of
Pakistan itself was a British ploy to divide and weaken India. The function
of Pakistan in Western imperial strategy has been to attack and destabilize
India and Afghanistan (in the Soviet era), since these countries would not
bow to Western dictates. For this reason, the U.S. has ensured that the army
remained paramount in Pakistan. The Pakistani people have usually voted for
progressive policies when they have been given the opportunity to do so. They
have wanted a welfare state that would eradicate poverty and provide free
education, medical care, subsidized housing, and political rights. Instead,
the U.S. has unleashed a 60-year reign of terror on them through the Pakistan
army. Commentators
in the Western mainstream media worry about what they call Islamic terrorists
taking over Pakistan. The fact is that U.S.-backed terrorists have been
running the country for decades. The Pakistan army has always been an
instrument of U.S. terrorism, killing millions of people and ensuring that
most Pakistanis remain mired in massive poverty and illiteracy. This has
driven people in four different areas of the country to fight for their
independence. The ruinous
results of U.S. strategy are clear in Afghanistan as well: the country is
occupied by 45,000 troops from 47 Western countries, unable to defeat the
Taliban even after six years but killing thousands of civilians to support a
brutal warlord regime that is the world's biggest heroin trafficker. The
horrendously bloody and criminal failure of the West in Pakistan and
Afghanistan is overlooked by its mainstream journalists, who regularly call
Pakistan a "failed state." But Pakistan is only one in a long line
of states devastated by U.S. imperialism, from Iraq to the Congo to Vietnam. As the
Persian saying advises: "If you look in the mirror and do not like what
you see, don't smash the mirror. Smash your face."
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