Pakistan, increasingly destabilized by the U.S.-led war in neighbouring Afghanistan, is getting closer to blowing apart.
Bombings and shootings have rocked this nation of 167 million, including a brazen attack on army HQ in Rawalpindi and a massive bombing of Peshawar’s exotic Khyber Bazaar.
Pakistan’s army is readying a major offensive against rebellious Pashtun tribes in South Waziristan. Meanwhile, the feeble, deeply unpopular U.S.-installed government in Islamabad faces an increasingly rancorous confrontation with the military.
Like the proverbial bull in the china shop, the Obama administration and U.S. Congress chose this explosive time to try to impose yet another layer of American control over Pakistan as Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama appears about to send thousands more U.S. troops to Afghanistan.
Tragically, U.S. policy in the Muslim world continues to be driven by imperial arrogance, profound ignorance, and special interest groups.
The current Kerry-Lugar-Berman bill, advanced with President Barack Obama’s blessing, is ham-handed dollar diplomacy at its worst. Pakistan, bankrupted by corruption and feudal landlords, is being offered $7.5 billion US over five years — but with outrageous strings attached.
The U.S. wants to build a mammoth new embassy for 1,000 personnel in Islamabad, the second largest after its Baghdad fortress-embassy. New personnel are needed, claims Washington, to monitor the $7.5 billion in aid. So U.S. mercenaries are being brought in to protect U.S. “interests.” New U.S. bases will open. Most of this new aid will go right into the pockets of the pro-western ruling establishment, about 1% of the population.
Washington is also demanding veto power over promotions in Pakistan’s armed forces and intelligence agency, ISI. This crude attempt to take control of Pakistan’s proud, 617,000-man military has enraged the armed forces.
It’s all part of Washington’s “AfPak” strategy to clamp tighter control over restive Pakistan and make use of its armed forces and spies in Afghanistan. Seizing control of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, the key to its national defence against much more powerful India, is the other key U.S. objective.
However, 90% of Pakistanis oppose the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, and see Taliban and its allies as national resistance to western occupation.
Violence
Alarmingly, violent attacks on Pakistan’s government are coming not only from once-autonomous Pashtun tribes (wrongly called “Taliban”) in Northwest Frontier Province, but, increasingly, in the biggest province, Punjab. Recently, the U.S. Ambassador in Islamabad, in a fit of imperial hubris, actually called for air attacks on Pashtun leaders in Quetta, capital of Pakistan’s restive Baluchistan province.
Washington does not even bother to ask the impotent Islamabad government’s permission to launch air attacks inside Pakistan.
Along comes the Kerry-Lugar-Berman Big Bribe as most irate Pakistanis accuse President Asif Ali Zardari’s government of being American hirelings. Zardari, widower of Benazir Bhutto, has been dogged for decades by charges of corruption. His senior aides in Pakistan and Washington are being denounced by what’s left of Pakistan’s media not yet under government control.
Washington seems unaware of the fury its crude, counter-productive policies have whipped up in Pakistan. The Obama administration keeps listening to Washington-based neoconservatives, military hawks, and “experts” who tell it just what it wants to hear, not the facts. Ottawa does the same.
Revolt
As a result, Pakistan’s military, the nation’s premier institution, is being pushed to the point of revolt. Against the backdrop of bombings and shootings come rumours the heads of Pakistan’s armed forces and intelligence may be replaced.
Pakistanis are calling for the removal of the Zardari regime’s strongman, Interior Minister Rehman Malik. Many clamour for the head of Pakistan’s ambassador in Washington, my old friend Hussain Haqqani, who is seen as too close to the Americans. One suspects the wily Haqqani is also angling to get the U.S. to help him become Pakistan’s next leader.
The possibility of a military coup against the discredited Zardari regime grows. But Pakistan is dependent on U.S. money, and fears India. Can its generals afford to break with patron Washington?
© 2009 Toronto Sun
The claims have long been scoffed at by Pakistani journalists, 
Peace and Justice Post 
China: Uighur Detainees ‘Disappeared’ After Xinjiang Protests
October 21, 2009Uighur women grieve for men who they claim were taken away by Chinese auhtorities after the July 5-7, 2009 protests in Urumqi, China on July 7, 2009.
Ku Huakua, a 25-year-old Han Chinese vegetable vendor was killed by a Uighur mob on the night of July 5th. His mother shows his photos in their home after returning from identifying his body. Urumqi, July 7, 2009.
The Chinese government says it respects the rule of law, but nothing could undermine this claim more than taking people from their homes or off the street and ‘disappearing’ them.
(New York) – The Chinese government should immediately account for all detainees in its custody and allow independent investigations into the July 2009 protests in Urumqi and their aftermath, Human Rights Watch said in a new report on enforced “disappearances” released today.
The 44-page report, “‘We Are Afraid to Even Look for Them’: Enforced Disappearances in the Wake of Xinjiang’s Protests,” documents the enforced disappearances of 43 Uighur men and teenage boys who were detained by Chinese security forces in the wake of the protests.
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