Posts Tagged ‘Pakistan’

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In Europe, as in Asia, Nato leaves a trail of catastrophe

August 20, 2008
This outdated military alliance is playing with fire in Russia. In Pakistan and Afghanistan it is playing with dynamite

Nato is useless. It has failed to bring stability to Afghanistan, as it failed to bring it to Serbia. It just breaks crockery. Nato has proved a rotten fighting force, which in Kabul is on the brink of being sidelined by exasperated Americans. Nor is it any better at diplomacy: witness its hamfisted handling of east Europe. As the custodian of the west’s postwar resistance to the Soviet Union’s nuclear threat it served a purpose. Now it has become a diplomats’ Olympics, irrelevant but with bursts of extravagant self-importance.

Yesterday’s Nato ministerial meeting in Brussels was a fig leaf over the latest fiasco, the failure to counter the predictable Russian intervention in Georgia. Ostensibly to save Russian nationals in South Ossetia, the intervention was, in truth, to tell Georgia and Ukraine that they must not play games with the west along Russia’s frontier. Nato, which Russia would (and should) have joined after the collapse of the Soviet Union, is now a running provocation along the eastern rim of Europe.

There was no strategic need for Nato to proselytise for members, and consequent security guarantees, among the Baltic republics and border states to the south. Nor is there any strategic need for the US to place missile sites in Poland or the Czech Republic. This was mere Nato self-aggrandisement reinforcing the lobbying of the Pentagon hawks.

These moves were bound to infuriate the hypersensitive Russians, and did. There is no point in western pundits saying that the thrust of Nato close to the Russian border is quite different from the cold war location of Soviet missiles in Cuba. It seems the same to Russian nationalists.

Nor is it any good pundits remarking that Russia’s defence of Russian minorities in Georgia is quite different from Nato’s intervention to defend the Kurdish minority in Iraq or the Albanian minority in Serbia. Again, that is just how it seems to Russia.

George Bush said earlier this month that “the age of spheres of influence is over”. In that case why push that most potent sphere of influence, Nato, to the Russian border? And what of the sphere-of-influence theory that underpinned Bush’s neoconservative plan to conquer the Muslim world for democracy?

The US’s two greatest bugbears at present, Russia and Iran, both have grounds for feeling encircled by hostile forces. However badly they behave, they too are vulnerable to the politics of irrational fear. Both countries display the rudiments of democratic activity, with paranoia playing on pluralism.

The glib response of Nato’s leaders has been hawkish, that the only thing “these people” understand is tough talk and big sticks. But that just apes Russia’s attitude towards Georgia and Ukraine, which at least Russia has the power to enforce.

The west is not threatened by Russia. Turning its border into a zone of bluff and counter-bluff, so Nato can boast 10 extra flags outside its headquarters, has proved destabilising and provocative. Intelligence, like morality, is supposedly the tribute power should pay to reason. Russia is boorish and belligerent enough already. Why encourage it?

With Russia, Nato is playing with fire. In Afghanistan/Pakistan – which should always be yoked together – it is playing with dynamite. Here Osama bin Laden and Donald Rumsfeld must be laughing in unison: the former because Nato’s conduct of the war against the Taliban has been a recruiting sergeant for al-Qaida in Pakistan; the latter because everything he said about nation-building has proved true. “Get in fast and get out fast” was his strategy, and he was right.

The fall of Pervez Musharraf might be good news for Pakistan’s democrats. It is dreadful news for Nato’s proconsuls in their fortified enclaves in Kabul. The likelihood of political turbulence in Pakistan can only increase the hold that pro-Taliban tribes have over the long frontier with Afghanistan and, with it, the certainty of an escalating war.

Nato’s performance here has been dreadful. A half-hearted peacekeeper, it had displayed divided counsels, divided leadership and divided rules of engagement. It has reflected the view of the US general in Kosovo, Wesley Clark, that US units should never again be placed under international command. International command means no command at all.

A Pentagon report by General Barry McCaffrey, revealed last week, criticises the lack of command unity in Kabul. “Afghanistan is in misery,” it says. “A sensible coordination of all political and military elements of the Afghan theatre of operation does not exist.”

There is said to be a plan for a 12,000-strong reinforcement of US troops to stage a Baghdad-style “surge”, outside the remit of Nato. The idea that the rural Taliban might be susceptible to the same handling as Iraq’s urban militias may be senseless, but is on the cards. Such a surge would mean three rival armies – Afghan, Nato and American – roaming this troubled land, a gift to any enemy.

The newly triumphant coalition in Islamabad must long for the days when its Afghan backyard was quiet. The Taliban regime was funded by opium and the Saudis, and of no strategic (as opposed to terrorist) concern to the west. There were no US Predators bombing villages, no CIA phone-tapping, no suborned Pakistan intelligence officers, no outside interference. Pakistan’s sphere of influence might not be to every taste, but it was roughly stable.

We shall now have the world’s sixth largest country, and with an active nuclear arsenal, in internal turmoil because of a doomed Nato adventure on its border. Taliban units are operating freely throughout the south and east of Afghanistan and within miles of the capital, Kabul, flatly contradicting the mendacious spin of Nato spokesmen over the past two years.

Western governments seem never to learn. Counter-insurgency wars of this sort never work if they become drawn out. At best they leave broken, corrupted, failed states such as Lebanon and Kosovo – and, soon, Iraq. At worst they mean defeat. If ever America were walking into another Vietnam, it is now in Afghanistan, fast replacing Iraq as the mecca for every anti-western fanatic on earth.

Peace in Afghanistan might not matter over much. But its absence will grossly destabilise Pakistan, and that matters greatly. Is this to be another feather in Nato’s cap?

simon.jenkins@guardian.co.uk

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American-backed dictator tossed overboard

August 19, 2008

Snehal Shingavi explains why the U.S. could no longer keep its man Musharraf in charge of Pakistan.

Socialist Worker, August 19, 2008

Facing impeachment, Pervez Musharraf resigns as president of Pakistan.

Facing impeachment, Pervez Musharraf resigns as president of Pakistan.

PERVEZ MUSHARRAF has now joined an infamous legacy of Pakistani military dictators–Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan–who have been forced to resign because of immense popular pressure.

Musharraf resigned from the presidency on August 18 rather than face impending impeachment charges, thanks to a deal brokered by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. While much of the Western media has been preoccupied with what effect his resignation will have on the “war on terror,” they have ignored how Musharraf’s ouster has invigorated the civil society organizations, unions and left-wing groups that took to the streets in celebration of his downfall.

In reality, Musharraf’s resignation is a crisis of the West’s own making. As Musharraf has drawn Pakistan further and further into the U.S.’s imperial designs, popular dissatisfaction has grown with these policies. And in the past few years, Pakistan has seen its economy decline, its acts of terror increase and violations of civil rights rise dramatically.

This is a far cry from the “order” that Musharraf promised when he came to power in 1999. As the chief of staff of the armed forces, Musharraf overthrew then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) in a bloodless coup. Sharif’s regime was riddled with corruption. Also, a section of the domestic ruling class chafed at Sharif’s habit of antagonizing the West, first with nuclear weapons tests which incurred sanctions and then by criticizing U.S. foreign policy. But Sharif overplayed his hand. He threatened to oust Musharraf, but was himself forced from office instead.

Once in power, Musharraf immediately began a policy of reorganizing the military and the Pakistani economy. He benefited from a period of economic growth, stimulated in part by India’s booming economy.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

ONE OF the primary reasons that Musharraf lasted as long as he did was because of the role that he played in the U.S. war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Musharraf was initially reluctant to collaborate, given that Pakistan’s fortunes and regional influence had actually been raised as a consequence of the Taliban’s capture of Kabul in the 1990s. But after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Bush administration needed support from frontline states like Pakistan in order to pull off an invasion of Afghanistan to oust the Taliban and hunt Osama bin Laden.

Thus, a combination of threats and economic benefits moved Pakistan more fully into the U.S. orbit. Pakistan’s military bases, intelligence and personnel were made available to the U.S. military. In exchange, the U.S. lifted sanctions on Pakistan and helped steer foreign direct investment into the country. This cooperation with the U.S. war on terror, though, brought Musharraf into immediate conflict with several forces inside of his country.

First, there was the military and intelligence establishment, both of which had been inculcated with Islamic ideology since the military regime of Gen. Zia Ul-Haq, who seized power in 1977 and was killed in 1988. Thus, Musharraf’s about face, turning yesterday’s Muslim allies into today’s terrorist enemies, didn’t sit well with large parts of the military. The army and intelligence operatives responded by only half-heartedly participating in efforts to secure the border, drive out al-Qaeda, close Islamic schools (madrassas) and shut down Islamist outfits.

For example, Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence Agency (ISI) did crack down upon some Islamist outfits in the regions bordering Afghanistan–the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the Northwest Frontier Provinces (NWFP). Yet at other times it turned a blind eye to such organizations, allowing the Taliban and al-Qaeda to gain strength in the region. But the repression of Islamist movements antagonized Muslim organizations and ordinary Pakistanis, who chafed at the complicity of the Pakistani military in the U.S. imperial project.

Indeed, Musharraf’s cooperation with the U.S. against Afghanistan and Iraq soon turned major Islamic parties and organizations against him. Several attempts were made on Musharraf’s life by suicide bombers and other would-be assassins. The most spectacular confrontation with the Islamists took place last year, in a bloody police operation to oust Islamist militants who the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in the city of Islamabad.

In order to carry out the U.S. war, Musharraf also had to pursue a domestic agenda of neoliberal, pro-business economic policies and the suppression of political freedoms and liberties. The first part of the agenda meant breakneck privatization of state-owned industries at bargain-basement prices, while the second meant that Musharraf routinely suspended the constitution, shut down mainstream media outlets, declared states of emergency and even disappeared political dissidents.

Perhaps the most egregious of Musharraf’s crimes was the political engineering of his tenure as president. The 2002 referendum that Musharraf used to justify his seizing control of the presidency was widely disputed as rigged. Musharraf also angered the judiciary by refusing to resign his position as head of the Pakistani military, despite the fact that the constitution explicitly prohibits the executive from holding a position in the armed forces.

As Musharraf prepared to seek election in 2007, calls for him to resign from the army grew, sparking a protest in the judiciary itself. The election debacle began with the Supreme Court of Pakistan threatening to declare Musharraf’s presidency illegal, and concluded with Musharraf suspending the constitution, firing the judges who opposed him and stacking the judiciary with loyal judges (who still hold their positions). This provoked a massive protest by lawyers, students and ordinary Pakistanis to demand the reinstatement of the judges. Popular dissatisfaction only sharpened.

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THE CONSTITUTIONAL shenanigans of Musharraf allowed the U.S. to engineer the return of Benazir Bhutto, a former prime minister and head of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), to contest parliamentary elections. She could have provided the legitimacy that the U.S. needed to conduct its war on terror, but her assassination earlier this year meant that the U.S. would have to cobble together a much more fragile set of allies.

In the wake of Bhutto’s assassination, her PPP won the largest number of seats in the parliamentary elections, followed closely by Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N. The two rival parties formed an uneasy anti-Musharraf coalition government, and it appeared that Musharraf might be able to survive because of the government’s weakness.

By summer, however, the PPP and PML-N closed ranks to push for Musharraf’s impeachment. Next, Pakistan’s four provincial legislatures passed votes of no-confidence in Musharraf. An impeachment proceeding appeared inevitable. So Musharraf agreed to a plan hatched by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia which allowed him to leave his office and potentially accept voluntary exile. In the meantime, the office of the presidency will be assumed temporarily by Mohammadmian Soomro, a Musharraf ally, until the parliament can elect a new president.

The biggest beneficiaries of Musharraf’s resignation will be the PPP, headed by Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, and Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N. But Musharraf’s resignation has actually ignited and inspired grassroots activism throughout the country–and unless the judiciary is restored and the economy improves markedly, the instability in the country is not likely to end soon.

Also, the resignation of Musharraf hardly caught the West by surprise. Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani of the PPP made a recent trip to Washington with the intention of convincing the Bush regime that the war on terror could be fought without Musharraf at the helm. The U.S., while unhappy at losing a reliable ally, didn’t lift a finger to help Musharraf. The Bush administration realizes that the PPP is willing to play the role the Americans want them to.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

THE U.S. needs continued Pakistani support for a number of political and military objectives. On the one hand, Pakistan’s position as an important Muslim nation allows the U.S. to project the lie that it has regional allies. On the other hand, it needs Pakistan to secure its border with Afghanistan, which has enabled the Taliban and its allies to obtain resources and reach safe havens.

The new civilian government in Pakistan will likely produce some changes in military policy. But these will take some time take effect, and are not likely to be substantial. In fact, both the lawyers’ movement and the PPP have campaigned for Musharraf’s ouster on the basis that they would be better equipped to handle the terrorists without him.

And the problems that Pakistan faces will not be resolved by simply removing Musharraf. Tariq Ali recently explained:

Musharraf’s departure will highlight the problems that confront the country, which is in the grip of a food and power crisis that is creating severe problems in every city. Inflation is out of control and was approaching the 15 percent mark in May 2008. Gas (used for cooking in many homes) prices have risen by 30 percent. Wheat, the staple diet of most people has seen a 20 percent price hike since November 2007, and while the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization admits that the world’s food stocks are at record lows, there is an additional problem in Pakistan. Too much wheat is being smuggled into Afghanistan to serve the needs of the NATO armies. The poor are the worst hit, but middle-class families are also affected and according to a June 2008 survey, 86 percent of Pakistanis find it increasingly difficult to afford flour on a daily basis, for which they blame their own new government.

Some of these economic troubles could have been solved with the extraordinary amount of money that Pakistan spends on its military and the war on terror. But as long as the priorities for Pakistan are determined by what is best for the country’s tiny elite and the U.S. empire, ordinary Pakistanis will continue to suffer.

The hope for real change in Pakistan will depend on whether or not the social movements of the day can seize on the opportunity to advance an altogether different–one that begins with removing Pakistan from the project of building the American empire.

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Musharraf resigns as president of Pakistan

August 18, 2008

Leader defends his record in televised address to the nation

Pervez Musharraf announces his resignation

Pervez Musharraf announces his resignation. Photograph: Dawn TV/AFP

Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf, today announced his resignation after robustly defending his record.

Expectations that the former army chief and firm US ally would go had been mounting since the coalition government, led by the party of the assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, said this month it planned to impeach him.

In a televised address to the nation, he defended his decision to impose emergency rule late last year, claiming his political opponents would have made matters worse for Pakistan.

He said Pakistan had always been his priority, and that he had imposed emergency rule in order to save the country from crisis.

Musharraf said his policies had improved the economy and women’s rights, and laid the ground for democracy.

“People have said my policies over the past nine years have been wrong – they were wrong,” said Musharraf. “My critics must not make things worse for Pakistan.

“Some elements acting for vested interests have made false allegations against me. Everything I have done will have long-term benefits for Pakistan.”

Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 coup but has been largely sidelined since his rivals won parliamentary elections in February, had for months resisted calls on him to resign.

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Pakistan: Musharraf balks at plan for ‘graceful exit’ before impeachment

August 16, 2008

Negotiations between the Pakistani government and President Pervez Musharraf, aimed at securing his exit from office before impeachment, are stalling with only days left before proceedings begin in parliament.

The coalition government had hoped to pressure the president to quit, before the messy and possibly dangerous impeachment process formally starts. US and British diplomats have also tried to mediate a compromise to allow Musharraf to “exit gracefully”.

Once a motion is moved in parliament, which is scheduled for early next week, it will be difficult for the administration to let him go. But he is refusing to go down without a fight. He insists that he be given indemnity from any future prosecution and that he will live in Pakistan – terms the government will not meet. While an exit deal is still the most likely outcome, negotiations are going down to the wire.

“We’re hitting a wall now and we’re so close [to impeachment proceedings],” said one senior member of the coalition. “It’s this commando thing of his. His living here would be like a red rag to a bull. He wants to be photographed playing golf and taking it easy.”

The coalition wants Musharraf to leave Pakistan, for at least a year or two, until emotions cool down. In particular, Nawaz Sharif, a coalition leader who was thrown out of office in the coup staged by Musharraf in 1999, would find it personally and politically difficult to have the president in the country, safe from prosecution. The president’s house, which is still under construction, is located just outside Islamabad, so he would be a constant presence.

“Basically, Musharraf is being stubborn; the two sides are playing brinkmanship,” said Najam Sethi, editor of Pakistan’s Daily Times newspaper. “Nawaz Sharif is sitting there, sharpening his knife.”

Musharraf has offered to leave Pakistan for some time, but only after three to six months. He is adamant that, unlike Sharif and the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, he will not be seen to be fleeing the country as soon as he is out of office.

Musharraf’s legal adviser, Abdul Hafeez Pirzada, went on a national television programme to suggest that the impeachment proceedings would drag on for months.

“The president has all the options, constitutional and political,” said Pirzada. “All institutions will be seriously damaged [by impeachment], perhaps beyond repair.”

The president’s aides boasted that he would defend himself in the proceedings, not resign. Sharif appears keen to humiliate the president but the prospect of a prolonged trial is what the senior member of the coalition, the Pakistan People’s party, wants to avoid.

The army, Pakistan’s most powerful institution, has said that it would now stay out of politics but it is likely to be appalled by the impeachment proceedings against a former army chief.

“He [Musharraf] may think it is better to go down as president and hope the army bails him out,” said Ikram Sehgal, a political analyst and friend of the president. “This situation is shot with a lot of danger.”

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Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Press

August 14, 2008

Credit and Credibility

By BRIAN CLOUGHLEY | Counterpunch, Aug. 13, 2008

So attacks in Afghanistan must be the work of Pakistan’s dastardly Directorate of Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), yet again, because the New York Times told us the other day that “American intelligence agencies have concluded that members of Pakistan’s powerful spy service helped plan the deadly July 7 bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, according to United States government officials.” The New York Times went on to claim that “The conclusion was based on intercepted communications between Pakistani intelligence officers and militants who carried out the attack, the officials said, providing the clearest evidence to date that Pakistani intelligence officers are actively undermining American efforts to combat militants in the region. The American officials also said there was new information showing that members of the Pakistani intelligence service were increasingly providing militants with details about the American campaign against them, in some cases allowing militants to avoid American missile strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas.”

There are plenty of clichés (“powerful spy service” and “actively undermining” are splendid examples), but not a shred of hard evidence in this important story. There is not one bit of material that can be verified or even checked for accuracy. No names are named. There are declarations by anonymous “American officials” concerning supposed electronic intercepts of which no details are provided. But the New York Times and other US newspapers chose to blare to the world the unsupported conclusion that Pakistan is guilty of treason against itself.

It might be thought that the New York Times would have learned a lesson after being manipulated by the infamously incompetent and gullible reporter Judith Miller who made such a fool of the paper at the time of the US invasion of Iraq. She swallowed nonsense purveyed to her by un-named “government officials” and other anonymous and indeed malevolent sources, but the newspaper’s editors just followed along and published the rubbish. Garbage in; Garbage out. As one of her colleagues said of her in the context of a combined story : “She has turned in a draft of a story of a collective enterprise that is little more than dictation from government sources over several days, filled with unproven assertions and factual inaccuracies.”

To believe the sort of drivel that comes from “officials” of any nationality who refuse to be identified takes particular energy and dedication. But even those who are required to speak on the record are liars when it suits official purposes and policies. Take the VOA report in early July that “The Pentagon says no civilians were killed in an air strike Sunday in a remote area of eastern Afghanistan, which local officials say killed 27 people who were walking to a wedding . . . US military officials in Kabul say they believe the air strike hit its intended target, a group of militants. Pentagon Spokesman Bryan Whitman confirmed that view. “I can only tell you I talked to Afghanistan this morning, and they are very clear with that particular strike that they believe they struck the intended target and that there were not innocent civilians involved in that particular strike”.”

The claim, the flat statement, that there were no civilian casualties was first made by unidentified “US military officials,” then by a spokesman who had “talked to Afghanistan.” To whom did he talk? To any Afghans? To anyone in the Afghan government? To an Afghan who had lost a wife or husband or children in the blitzed village of Deh Bala where so many civilians were killed? Of course not : he spoke with “Afghanistan” as represented by a bunch of unnamed US officials in Kabul. He then retailed the same rubbish, that “there were not [sic] innocent civilians involved,” which was a lie, because the province governor stated with hard evidence – like bodies of children – that there had indeed been many civilian deaths.

Then the President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, left his fortress in Kabul and flew to the stricken village to speak with the tribes, saying he had “come to share your grief.” Now : is it likely that Karzai, beholden to Bush as he is, would have taken the trouble to do that if the US claim of no civilian deaths had been even remotely believable?

One has to give Karzai recognition for venturing into the region where the US bombing took place, because there is no doubt that by doing so his life was in extreme danger (possibly from a US airstrike like the one for which he went to offer condolences). We must give credit where it’s due. But there is no credit, or credibility for that matter, due to the liars who try, with increasing success, to mislead the media and thereby the outside world, about the slaughter of civilians through incompetence. And when they kill so many scores of civilians by reason of technical or human ineptitude and then lie about the crimes, how can we believe mysterious unidentified “officials” who allege without evidence that Pakistan’s intelligence agency was responsible for the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul?

Stories change ; usually when the lie has become too obvious for all the “officials” and other sources to continue spreading it. As happened with the killing of a bank manager and two of his staff by American troops on Baghdad’s Airport Road on 25 June, for example. It was stated officially that “The attack left bullet holes in two of the convoy vehicles, and a weapon was found in the car;” but these were lies. Deliberate, unvarnished, straightforward, downright lies. Iraqi outrage was such that there had to be an investigation, and eventually a US spokesman had to say that the official description of the incident was poppycock from beginning to end. (Nobody was punished for telling lies or slaughtering civilians, of course : that would be too much to expect.)

There are dozens of stories like this. Most of the killings of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan are ignored because US military media releases are published unquestioningly by the world’s newspapers. The words of US “officials” go straight into print without question and are presented as incontrovertible fact.

The evidence that US “officials” have lied to the depth of their bootstraps is, however, irrefutable. So why believe the unsupported word of nameless US officials that Pakistan plotted the Kabul bombing?

As a result of worldwide parade of a media report based on unverifiable declarations by anonymous “US government officials” there has been a dramatic dive, a terrible crash in relations between Pakistan and India. At the exact time when, for the first time in almost five years, there were exchanges of fire between soldiers of India and Pakistan along the Line of Control in Kashmir, the sadly disputed territory between the two countries, there suddenly appeared a US-sourced report that gravely endangers ongoing but fragile India-Pakistan confidence-building discussions.

Why?

The tale from unidentified US “officials” that Pakistan was involved in an attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul was published in a period when the governments of India and Pakistan are extremely vulnerable to religious and nationalist pressures. In Delhi the shaky coalition is apprehensive about elections next year and trying to be all things to all people; it is under enormous strain. In Islamabad there is a barely-functioning coalition of mutual distrust, and the country is desperately in need of external support that could promote domestic calm. Domestic and bilateral stability in the region, one would think, should be encouraged by foreign powers.

Yet “American intelligence agencies” and “United States government officials” tell newspaper reporters that Pakistan was involved in attacking the Indian embassy in Kabul, thus immeasurably increasing tension between Islamabad and Delhi (and Islamabad and Kabul, of course) and almost destroying their faltering but sincere approaches to rapprochement.

The extremely serious implications of such statements to reporters of a large US newspaper, and consequent international results, must have been understood by whoever made them. So why did they make them? What was the purpose? It certainly wasn’t to encourage dialogue between two neighbours who distrust each other.

We will never know the motive, of course, because there is no means of finding out; just as there is no means of verifying the story. So once again some unaccountable US officials have sown even more distrust and created much more resentment in a region in which there is singular lack of trust and a marked inclination to believe the worst of neighbours. Whoever had the bright idea of spreading this malevolent tale must now have the satisfaction that it had the result of stirring up hatred and suspicion. Give credit where it’s due. But credibility is quite another matter.

Brian Cloughley lives in France. His website is www.briancloughley.com

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Battle lines move from Kashmir to Kabul

August 11, 2008

Asia Times, August 9, 2008

By M K Bhadrakumar

There is wide acclaim today among Indian strategic analysts and diplomatic editors that New Delhi has scored a major diplomatic victory in Afghanistan and that its “influence” in Kabul has “peaked”. This victory has come on the back of Washington’s strategic pro-India tilt and, in the period since end-2001 to date, India’s earmarking of a staggering US$1.2 billion as assistance for Afghan “reconstruction”.

Some Indian cheerleaders expound the thesis that it is the hallmark of an aspiring great power to “first learn to become a net provider of regional security” – and Delhi must therefore step in and lend a hand in fixing the Afghan problem. Others visualize Afghanistan providing a “unique opportunity” to be of help to the United States, and that Delhi will eventually benefit from the payback by a grateful superpower that is sure to come. Yet another Indian viewpoint is that it simply pays to rattle Islamabad by creating space for Afghan President Hamid Karzai. An invidious Indian argument is that Delhi should use Afghan soil to retaliate against Islamabad’s support of Kashmiri militants.

In diplomacy, maybe, it pays to sidestep historical memory. Archives may contain only chronicles of wasted time. Very few Indian strategic analysts who at present hold forth on Afghanistan seem to be even remotely aware of how, like Karzai, the then head of state in Kabul, Dr Mohammad Najibullah, was a frequent visitor to Delhi in the late 1980s.

That, too, was a twilight zone in the 30-year-old Afghan war when the conflict, like today’s, uneasily lingered in the shade. Fortunately for Delhi, though, the slow-rolling coup that worked its way through the Afghan labyrinth for months before culminating in the morning of April 16, 1992, with Najib’s ouster, didn’t come entirely as surprise. Indian diplomats soon began diligently seeking out the Afghan mujahideen in the dangerous Hindu Kush mountains, to explain to those new masters the cold rationale of India’s exceedingly warm friendship with Najib.

They explained patiently that it was after all a strictly state-to-state, government-to-government relationship with Najib, shorn of ideology or religion or commitments. The Northern Alliance’s Ahmad Shah Massoud still looked away as elements in his militia systematically ransacked the Indian Embassy, forcing its diplomats to flee Kabul.

Yet, within no time, by the mid-1990s, Massoud had become India’s key Afghan ally – or, as much as he could be anyone’s ally. Certainly, it remains a tantalizing proposition whether with all the Indian help Taliban rule could have been overthrown but for al-Qaeda’s historic decision to attack New York and Washington in September 2001.

Continued . . .

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Musharraf to fight impeachment

August 8, 2008
Al Jazeera, Aug 8. 2008

There are fears that further violence could result from the current impasse [AFP]

Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president, will defend himself against impeachment, his aides have said.

The announcement came a day after the ruling coalition vowed to launch proceeding to oust him.

Musharraf is set to meet his legal and political advisers on Friday to discuss his options.

“He is considering the options that are available. He will respond to the government’s allegations and defend himself,” a presidential aide told the AFP news agency on condition of anonymity.

Speculation is rife that he may dissolve parliament or declare another state of emergency, moves set to further deepen the current political turmoil in the strife-torn country.

Meanwhile, Yousuf Raza Gilani, the Pakistan prime minister, is heading to China to attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.

Musharraf was scheduled to attend the event, but cancelled due to his possible removal from office.

‘Few options’

Tariq Pirzada, a political and strategic affairs anaylst in Islamabad, told Al Jazeera that Musharraf has very few options.

“What we have is a situation where he is isloated, he has no political backing, even the US is not backing him, and labelled the situation as an ‘internal matter’,” he said.

“He is in dire straits, and its either he steps down or faces impeachment.”

The coalition still needs the support of other MPs to oust Musharraf [AFP]

Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of slain former premier Benazir Bhutto, and Nawaz Sharif, also a former prime minister, announced on Thursday that they would seek Musharraf’s impeachment for allegedly mismanaging the country.

Officials said parliament could begin the impeachment process by filing a charge sheet against Musharraf as early as Monday – which is also Musharraf’s 65th birthday.

The aide who spoke for him said Musharraf would “not wait for the numbers game” – meaning that he would not indulge in political horsetrading to stop the coalition getting the votes it needs.

Under Pakistan’s constitution, impeachment requires a two-thirds majority in the upper and lower houses of parliament.

It would be the first time in Pakistan’s 61-year history that a president has been impeached.

The coalition is currently several seats short of the 295 votes it requires out of the 439 in the senate and national assembly to remove Musharraf.

Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), together with smaller coalition partners, have 266 seats and need a further 29 MPs, mainly from the troubled tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.

Military support

But the key factor in Musharraf’s decision is likely to be the support he gets from the country’s 500,000-strong army, the leadership of which he gave up last November.

General Ashfaq Kayani, the army chief and Musharraf’s successor, has shown no signs of disloyalty and the military has historically acted to defend the honour of its current and former chiefs.

But Kayani has also appeared keen to keep the army out of politics after six decades in which the military has been in power for more than half the time, damaging its image domestically.

Imposing a state of emergency would require Musharraf to have military support, while dissolving parliament could also cause unrest in a country already suffering from widespread economic problems.

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Life of Dada Amir Haider Khan

August 5, 2008

Nasir Khan, August 5, 2008

All those who oppose imperialistic wars and plunder, subjugation and oppression of weaker nations and peoples, and wide-spread violations of human rights in various parts of the world will be glad to see the publication of the two-volume autobiography of Indo-Pakistani revolutionary Dada Amir Haider Khan. The life and struggles of this eternal revolutionary who stood for advancing the cause of workers and peasants and firmly adhered to the world-outlook of proletarian internationalism is quite amazing. No matter what hardships he came across, he held belief in the eventual emancipation of the toiling masses, not by any outside force or agency but through their own struggles shaped by their political consciousness for a worthy human existence.

Dada Amir Haider Khan was not an idealist; he was a man of action. By his practical example he showed how to work and organise workers locally so that they could stand for and protect their political and economic interests. In his personal life, he always remained a fakir, a ‘homeless wanderer’, as he used to call himself. Neither did he own any valuable possessions. He had donated the share of his inherited land for building a school in his ancestral village, a poor and deprived area of small farmers.

I met Dada half a century ago, in 1957, when I started my college education in Rawalpindi. This early contact with him was to become a lifelong friendship and close comradeship. He was above all a sincere and trustworthy man and a political activist. But he was also a charismatic person; those who met him were drawn towards his magnetic personality.

Dr Hasan N. Gardezi edited and supervised the publication of Dada’s memoirs with great diligence and a sense of duty to preserve the historical role of a truly great and unique revolutionary who emerged from the part of the world now called Pakistan. I offer my thanks to Professor Gardezi for his tireless efforts to publicise the work of Dada, and also thank other friends who have in one way or the other contributed to the task. I believe all the progressive people who have known Dada or those who will come to know about him through the publication of his memoirs will highly appreciate the work of Professor Gardezi. He has preserved the legacy of the great revolutionary for the coming generations of radical and progressive people.

Volume 1 was first published in New Delhi in 1989, prefaced by our esteemed Comrade V.D. Chopra. Now the memoirs in two volumes are available from Karachi.

[ To obtain your copies please contact: Muhammad Kamran, Office Assistant, Pakistan Studies Centre, University of Karachi, Karachi, 75270, E-mail pscuok@yahoo. com

For further information the editor can be reached at: gardezihassan@ hotmail.com ]

Historians and scholars in Marxist tradition may also find the following publications and references to Dada Amir Haider Khan helpful:

  • Harry Haywood, Black Bolshevik, Liberator Press, Chicago, Illinois, 1978, pp. 164-5, 509.
  • Santimoy Ray, Freedom Movement and Indian Muslims, People’s Publishing House, New Delhi, 1978, p. 82.
  • S.S. Mirajkar, ‘Reminiscences’, Marxist Miscellany No. 15, March 1979, New Delhi, pp. 21-22.
  • Amir Haider Khan, ‘Reminiscences’, Marxist Miscellany No. 15, March 1979. (This is a memorable article written by Dada Amir Haider Khan on the 50th Anniversary of the Meerut Conspiracy Case.)
  • Subodh Roy (ed.), Communism in India, Ganashakti Printers, 1972.

I republish below a remarkable book review by Jamil Omar

***************************************************************
Book Review by Jamil Omar

Chains to Lose
Life and Struggle of a Revolutionary
Memoirs of Dada Amir Haider Khan
Edited by Hassan N. Gardezi,

Publisher: Pakistan Study Centre, University of Karachi

An Indian Che Guevara

The party had also begun extending its activities to Madras. A group of Andhra and Tamil students, amongst them P. Sundarayya were recruited to the CPI by Amir Hyder Khan … (E. M. S. Namboodripad Chief Minister of Kerala, The Communist Party in Kerala – Six Decades of Struggle and Advance.)

Thus, the CPI divided into two separate parties. The group which assembled in Calcutta would later adopt the name ‘Communist Party of India (Marxist)’. The CPI (M) also adopted its own political programme. P. Sundarayya was elected general secretary of the party. (History of the Communist Movement in India)

While he lived, Dada Amir Haider Khan struggled to change the course of history, now in death he would have us change our view of it.

Dada surfed the crest of change all over the globe during the first half of the twentieth century, which makes a simple account of his life read like contemporary world history. The account is so reliable and close to life that that it should prove a major primary source for scholars of history and politics. For political activists who have carried on the tradition bequeathed by Dada, the account is essential reading for a critical understanding of their own past.
His life

So little is known about Amir Haider Khan’s very full life that it seems appropriate to start by presenting a very brief overview:
1900 born in a remote village in Rawalpindi district. Orphaned at an early age, put in a madrassah. Escapes to Calcutta, brushes with the underworld handling Afghan opium.

1914 joins British merchant navy in Bombay. Observes at close hand the dilemma of Muslim soldiers in the British army fighting their Turkish brethren in Iraq.

1918 jumps British ship in New York. Joins American merchant marine. An Irish nationalist, Joseph Mulkane, introduces Dada to anti-British political ideas.

1920 meets Indian Nationalists and Ghadar party members in New York. Starts distributing ‘Ghadar ki Goonj’ to Indians in seaports around the world.

Passes the exam of Assistant Second Marine Engineer.

1922 dismissed from ship after the great post war strike. Works and travels inside the USA. Boiler engineer with the Pennsylvania Railroad. Airplane pilot. Autoworker in Detroit.
Political activist, works with anti-Imperialist League and the Workers (Communist) Party of the USA.

1926 sent by the American party to the Soviet Union to study at the University of the Toilers of the East.

1928 completes the University course in Moscow and arrives in Bombay. Establishes contact with Ghate, Dange Bradley, senior communists in Bombay.

March 1929 escapes arrest in the Meerut Conspiracy case and makes his way to Moscow to inform the Communist International (Comintern) on the situation in India and seek their assistance.

1929 arrives back in Bombay, meets and briefs B. T. Randive.

1930 Dada’s connection in Bombay with the Comintern turns informer. Dada rushes to Moscow to apprise them of the development and devise alternate plans. Attends the International Trade Union (Profintern) Congress as member of the presidium, also attends the 16th Congress of the CPSU.

1931 returns to Bombay. Sent to Madras to avoid arrest as still wanted in the Meerut Conspiracy case. Carries on political work all over South India under the pseudonym of Shankar. Sets up the Young Workers League.

1932 arrested by British for bringing out a pamphlet praising the Bhagat Singh Trio.

1936 transferred from Madras to Muzzafargarh jail, then transferred to Ambala jail.

1938 released. Starts open public political activity in Bombay. The Congress left elects him to the INC Bombay Provincial Committee. Attends the INC Annual General meeting in Ramgarh, Bihar.

1939 rearrested as Second World War breaks out. Interned in Nasik jail where Dada writes the first part of his memoirs.

1942 last of the Communists to be released after People’s War thesis. Trade Union work in Bombay. Attends the Natrakona (Mymansingh) All India Kissan Sabah in 1944.

1946 arrives in Rawalpindi on the eve of Pakistan to look after local party work. Organises a network to hide and safely repatriate Hindu families during the partition riots.

1949 arrested from Party office Rawalpindi under the Communal Act. Released after 15 months. Rearrested after a few months from Rawalpindi Kutchery for organizing the defence of Hassan Nasir and Ali Imam. When Liaqat government launches the Rawalpindi Conspiracy case Dada moved to Lahore fort and imprisoned with Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Fazal Din Qurban, Dada Feroz ud Din Mansur, Kaswar Gardezi, Hyder Bux Jatoi, Sobo Gayan Chandani, Chaudhry Muhammad Afzal, Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi, Zaheer Kashmiri, Hameed Akhtar etc. Released after campaign in Pakistan Times and Imroze, but restricted to his village. Shifted to Rawalpindi when Dada seen influencing the military jawans from his area.

1954 Bogra [Prime Minister] to appease his masters in USA bans the Communist Party of Pakistan on 24 July 1954. Dada arrested later bailed out by Mohammad Ali Kasuri.

1958 Ayub imposes martial law. Dada arrested interned in Rawalpindi jail with Afzal Bangash, Kaka Sanober and other comrades from the Frontier Province.

1970s and 1980s Dada spends his twilight years in Rawalpindi. Donates his land and with his own labour builds a Boys High School in his village, then builds a Girls School together with a science laboratory. Gets them approved and hands them over to the Government.

26 December 1989 Dada passes away.

The striking fact about the above chronology is that Amir Haider like Flash Gordon had an uncanny knack of being at the right place at the right time. But the analogy ends here. Flash is a fictional character representing the Imperial British, Dada was a real life adversary of Imperialism who fought the British with such skill and tenacity that American professors Overstreet and Windmiller were forced to admit that “Amir Haider Khan was the most dangerous individual in British India.” Throughout his life we see Dada, the born rebel, standing up against injustice and fighting to better the human condition. While Britannia ruled the waves, Dada fought for the rights of the Indian seamen working deep below the decks. When the sun did not set on the British Empire, Dada risked his life to distribute banned Ghadar Party literature to Indians all around the globe. As the new world started to prevail, Dada, a naturalized American at the age of twenty, learnt and struggled against the system from within – as an International Workers of the World activist, as a working class family member, as a hobo, as a Klu Klux Klan victim, as an avid reader of Popular Mechanics and Scientific American and builder and flyer of airplanes, as a political activist working closely with the great Agnes Smedley and much more. When the world was shaken by the great socialist revolutions, Dada, now a full member of the Bolshevik party in Moscow, was closely following on detailed maps the march of Chou En Lai forces towards Shanghai. And during the golden hour of the Indian freedom struggle, Dada almost single handedly broke the political isolation imposed upon India by the British. Despite being on the British most wanted list, Dada using different pseudonyms and covers carried on political and organizational work in various parts of India. Work, for which Dada is still loved in Rawalpindi, revered in Bombay and worshipped in South India.

Dada was an international revolutionary – a Che Guevara of another age and on a bigger stage. He met and worked closely with some of the greatest socialist leaders of the twentieth century, which included besides others Thomas Mann (Engles’ student), Rosa Luxemburg (German revolutionary), Clara Zetkin (German women rights activist), Karl Radek (leader of Communist International), Liu Shao Chi (later president of China), Agnes Smedley (American anti-imperialist), Ralph Fox (historian who died resisting Franco’s march to Madrid), Piatniski (secretary to Comintern and Stalin) and nearly all the leaders of the Indian freedom movement. Dada’s steadfast struggle for freedom earned him the respect of Indian nationalists from the Andaman Islands to Peshawar, from gentlemen members of the parliament to Naujawan Bharat Sabah revolutionaries.

His memoirs

Writing with revolutionary responsibility, Dada is careful not to wash any dirty linen in public. Like a true Bolshevik, Dada chooses to maintain public silence on issues where he disagreed with the official Party line. On the face of it this should make Dada’s memoirs politically anodyne. But Dada’s actions were anything but politically neutral and they speak for themselves. ‘Dada’ may be an honorific title in Pakistan but in Bombay it was applied to Amir Haider Khan and others to denigrate them as obstinate seniors, for these ‘foggies’ doggedly waged inner Party struggle against political opportunism. It is also rumoured that Pakistan provided the new generation of comrades in Bombay with an excuse to shunt Dada from Bombay to Rawalpindi. Yet Dada’s memoirs are a testimony that he remained faithful to Party discipline to the very end of his life. Even in his rumblings as an old man he was careful not to insinuate against some of the old comrades or the People’s War thesis or a host of other issues which clearly troubled him. However, a close reading of the memoirs reveals that even Party discipline could not compel Dada to distort or deny facts. For example, Dada, the main representative of the Third International (Comintern) in India, puts it on record that on the China question Trotsky was correct and Stalin wrong; he criticizes M. N. Roy, who has since been rehabilitated, of fiscal irresponsibility and S. A. Dange, who has since been debunked, of weak character. It is perhaps on account of such ‘deviations’ that Dada’s memoirs nearly got suppressed. Once by our own publisher of Baluchistan insurgency fame – although this may well have been the far worse crime of sheer irresponsibility; and once by the CPI press – which on the face of it appears to be a more deliberate act of indexing. But thanks to the untiring zeal of Dr. Hassan Gardezi, the memoirs’ editor, Dada’s invaluable autobiography has finally been preserved for posterity.

The memoirs in themselves are a straight forward narration of events, however, delayed availability of such rare and authentic material is bound to reopen many debates. A critical study of the memoirs would go a long way in helping us better understand and appreciate our past. Even a non-critical reading like the present one, sparked a number of politically relevant questions. I would like to briefly take up a few of these here.

Muslim demagogy and Pakistani Hagiography

Hagiography prefers to ignore rather than explain inconvenient facts. The mainstay of our local brand of hagiography is that Pakistan was created for Islam. However, our hagiographers have never bothered to explain that if so, then how come the Pakistan movement was led by modern secular Muslims and supported by the Communist Party while mullahs of all callings opposed it tooth and nail.

Another enigma for local hagiography is the Khilafat Movement. Khilafat Movement based on pan-Islamic demagogic sentiments was popular among urban Muslims for a brief period towards the end of the First World War. But with its fantastic scheme of Tark-i- Amwaal and Hijrat it violated the interests of propertied Muslim classes. The propertied Muslim classes, for their part, were always more attracted to the option of a separate homeland where they could pursue their economic interests unhindered by the dominant Hindu bourgeoisie. Hence it comes as no surprise that while the Khilafat Movement was befriended by the Congress, it was vehemently decried by Jinnah. Pakistani hagiography has long taxed itself to square the Muslim demagogic Hijrat Movement with its exact opposite, that is, the Pakistan Movement. The hagiographic compromise is to gloss over the unsavoury details of the Khilafat Movement while awarding Bi Amma’s sons the status of national heroes.

Dada’s memoirs clearly reveal the true nature of the Khilafat movement. In Bombay its support lay in the Urdu speaking Muslim mill workers in Madanpura, who were the descendents of ruined hand weavers of Bihar and UP. The Khilafat newspaper openly incited these Muslims to violence when Hindu-Muslim riots broke out in Bombay but with typical demagogic irresponsibility it blamed the Communists. This service must have been well appreciated by Khilafat’s bourgeoisie friends in the Congress, who watched with glee the fall of support for the fledging Red Flag Worker’s Union amongst Muslim workers and were keen to employ them as strikebreakers.

The Khilafat demagogy also ruined the poor Muslim Mopla peasants of Malabar. Muslim Mopala peasant’s under the influence of Khilafat demagogy left their lands and chose to migrate to Afghanistan. Like most muhajirs they were simply herded back by the Afghans. But on returning to Malabar they found their lands occupied by Hindu landlords. What ensued was a full-scale civil war in which thousands died and even more were herded like animals into prisons. Dada through his historic jail struggle succeeded in winning for these poor and illiterate Muslim prisoners decent living conditions.

Hagiography not only glosses over the crimes of yesterday, it makes us perpetrate new ones today. The truth of this aphorism is vividly demonstrated by the fact that while the Khilafat leader Mohammad Ali Johar is remembered through a prestigious Society in Karachi and a modern Town in Lahore, all trace of Dada Amir Haider Khan, the greatest of Indian Muslim freedom fighters, has been conveniently removed from our official history.

The conspiracy of conspiracy cases:

‘Divide and Rule’ may well have been the first rule of British Imperialism, but ‘give the dog a bad name and hang him’ was a close second. The second rule was repeatedly employed by the British against the Communists in the guise of Conspiracy Cases. During the 1920s British attempted to crush the nascent Communist Movement through a spate of Conspiracy Cases such as the First Peshawar Conspiracy Case, Second Peshawar Conspiracy Case, Moscow Conspiracy Case (in all these cases Soviet trained Muslim Communists were the main accused); the Cawnpore Bolshevik Conspiracy Case (local Communists main accused); Lahore Conspiracy Case (Bhagat Singh main accused), the Meerut Conspiracy (Dada Amir Haider one of the main accused).

Fortunately the outcome of the conspiracy of conspiracy cases seems to be determined by the Toynbee ‘Challenge-Response’ rule. Weak movements are destroyed by it while strong movements are strengthened by it. The Meerut Conspiracy case singularly backfired thanks to Dada’s efforts on an International scale, which resulted in Meerut solidarity campaigns all over the world. For its part the Communist Party of Great Britain put up Shaukat Usmani, who was a prisoner in Meerut, as its candidate in the 1931 general election for St. Pancras South East. The candidature of Usmani was aimed by the CPGB to ensure freedom for India, and to highlight the plight of the Meerut prisoners. In this election, the communists polled seventy five thousand votes.

After Independence, this Imperialist conspiracy of conspiracy cases was continued by the government of Pakistan, with Liaqat Ali Khan launching the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case to counter the growing influence of the Communists.

Remote controlling revolutions

International movements never make successful local revolutions. The business is far to complicated to be successfully managed remotely. In his memoirs Dada, however, is of the view that had the Comintern trained and assisted the Indian communists on the scale it assisted the Chinese, he and his comrades could have built a strong United Front with the Congress and developed the Satyagarha Movement into a genuine revolutionary movement. But the facts as related in his memoirs show that the Comintern was unstinting in its assistance to India, the problem lay in more objective realities.

Perhaps the most valuable lesson hidden in Dada’s memoirs is that revolutions are made locally not remotely. Culled from the memoirs, here are some of the reasons why:

Priorities may change in the remote location. For example, under Lenin Central Asiatic Bureau of Comintern set up in Tashkent a school to train the Khilafat Movement muhajirs drifting in Central Asia into an Indian army of revolutionaries. However, the Indian Military School was closed in April 1921, as a quid pro quo for industrial assistance that Britain promised to Soviet Russia, under Anglo-Russian Trade Pact in March 1921.
Stalin in 1943, to appease Roosevelt and Churchill, dismantled the whole Third International.

Local political complexities cannot be fully determined from a distance nor can foreign representatives be relied upon to come up with correct on spot remedies. Comintern’s role in the Chinese revolution provides many examples of how the best of International intentions can create serious local problems. During the united front period the great debate in the Comintern regarding China was whether to launch the agrarian revolution or not. Trotsky as member of the Comintern Executive Committee proposed the immediate launching of the agrarian revolution in the countryside, however, the majority led by Stalin rejected Trotsky’s thesis on the ground that launching the agrarian revolution at this stage would split the National United Front and would throw the reactionary Kuomintang leaders into the imperialist camp. But when America and Japan got directly involved, split in the United Front became inevitable and saving the lives of the communist cadres became top priority, M. N. Roy, Comintern’s representative in China, bungled the situation by disclosing confidential instructions to the left wing of the Kuomintang, with the result that Kuomintang moved swiftly to liquidate all Communists they could lay their hands upon, more than 5000 were executed in Shanghai alone.

Promotes Embassy Socialism: Reliance on material or intellectual assistance from outside weakens local confidence and resolve. In the long run it promotes a degenerate political culture that serves the interest of the foreign embassies (and donors) and not of the local masses.

Epilogue

Commenting on Dada’s quiet passing away the local press reported that “He lived and died virtually unsung. That did not diminish him. It makes the rest of us look more small.” One hopes that with the publication of Dada’s memoirs he would be better known and the long conspiracy to deny and defame him will come to an end. For this little known Indian Che Guevara is yet to take his rightful place in the pantheon of twentieth century revolutionaries.

See also Uddari Weblog (but here  the date of  death in 1986 is wrong; Dada died on 26 December 1989. I had asked the Uddari Weblog to make the necessary correction. Instead they deleted my comment!)

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“Afghanistan: Shoals Ahead for President Obama”

August 4, 2008

I. Wallerstein, Commentary No. 238, August 1, 2008

Obama has founded his campaign and become attractive to the American voters in large part on the basis of his position on the Iraq war. He opposed it publicly since 2002. He has called it a “dumb” war. He voted against the “surge.” He has called for a withdrawal over 16 months of all combat troops. He has refused to agree that it was wrong to oppose the surge.

While doing all that, he has always argued that the United States should do more in Afghanistan. This explicitly includes sending 10,000 more troops as soon as possible. He does not seem to think that the war there is somehow dumb. He does seem to think that the United States can “win” that war – with more troops and with more assistance from NATO. Once president, he may be in for a rude surprise.

Obama would do well to reflect upon the recent interview in Le Monde given by Gérard Chaliand. Chaliand is a leading geostrategist, specializing in so-called irregular wars. He knows Afghanistan exceedingly well, having been in and out of there over the last thirty years. He spent much time with the mujahidin during their struggle against Soviet troops in the 1980s. He currently spends several months a year in Kabul at the Center for Conflict and Peace Studies, of which he was one of the founders.

He is very clear on the military situation. “Victory is impossible in Afghanistan….Today, one must try to negotiate. There is no other solution.” Why? Because the Taliban control the local powers throughout the east and south of the country, where Pashtun populations prevail. Doubling the number of Western troops, doubling the projected size of the government’s army, and spending far more than the present 10% of outside aid for economic development might change the situation. But Chaliand doubts, and so do I, that this is politically likely for the United States and the NATO countries. The German Foreign Minister has already warned Obama not to press Germany for more troops to fight the Taliban. It is not that the Taliban can win either, says Chaliand. Rather there is a “military impasse.” The Taliban, who are geopolitically astute, are patiently waiting until the West “gets tired of a war that drags on.”

To see how the United States has got itself into this cul-de-sac, we have to go back a little bit into history. Since the nineteenth century, Afghanistan has been the focal point of the “great game” between Russia and Great Britain (now succeeded by the United States). No one has ever gained long-term control over this crucial zone of transit.

Today, Afghanistan has on its border a state called Pakistan, which has a large Pashtun population precisely on the border. Pakistan’s prime geopolitical interest is to have a friendly Afghanistan, lest India – but also Russia, the United States, and/or Iran – come to dominate it. Pakistan has been supporting in one way or another the Pashtun majority, which today means the Taliban. Pakistan is not about to stop doing this.

Under President Carter, the United States decided to try to oust a so-called Communist government deemed too close to Russia. We know now, via the release of archives from the Carter administration as well as via a famous interview given ten years ago by Zbigniew Brzezinski, then Carter’s National Security Advisor, that U.S. support of the mujahidin predated by at least six months the intrusion of Soviet troops. Indeed, one of the objectives was precisely to lure the Soviet Union into intervening militarily on the correct assumption that this would ultimately badly misfire and weaken the Soviet regime at home. Bravo! It did that. But the U.S. policy also at the same time spawned both Al-Qaeda and the Taliban – a classic case of blowback for the United States. In any case, none other than Brzezinski is warning Obama against repeating the Soviet error.

So, Obama is promising something today he is in no position to deliver. It is all very well for him to receive the implicit endorsement of the Iraqi government for his Iraq proposals. He is riding high on that, and will reap credit from the U.S. and world public for his stance. But he can undo that credit by failing to deliver on an impossible promise concerning Afghanistan. His gang of 300 advisors is not serving him very well on this issue. Obama knows how to be prudent when necessary. He is not being very prudent at all on Afghanistan.

by Immanuel Wallerstein

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US Vilifies Faithful Old Ally

August 4, 2008

Bush administration vents against Pakistan’s military intelligence for doing its duty — defending Pakistan

Eric Margolis | Toronto Sun, August 3, 2008

It’s blame Pakistan week. As resistance to western occupation of Afghanistan intensifies, the increasingly frustrated Bush administration is venting its anger against Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s military intelligence agency.

The White House leaked claims ISI was in cahoots with pro-Taliban groups in Pakistan’s tribal area along the Afghan border.

Pakistan’s Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhtar said the White House accuses ISI of warning Pashtun tribes of impending U.S. air attacks. President George W. Bush angrily asked Pakistan’s visiting Prime Minister Yousuf Gilani, “Who’s in charge of ISI?”

In Ottawa, the Harper government dutifully echoed Bush’s accusation against Pakistan, including the so far unsubstantiated claim that ISI agents had bombed India’s embassy in Kabul.

I was one of the first western journalists invited into ISI headquarters in 1986. ISI’s then director, the fierce Lt.- Gen. Akhtar Rahman, personally briefed me on Pakistan’s secret role in fighting Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. ISI’s “boys” provided communications, logistics, heavy weapons, and direction in the Afghan War. ISI played the key role in the victory over the Soviets.

On my subsequent trips to Pakistan I was routinely briefed by succeeding ISI chiefs and joined ISI officers in the field, sometimes under fire.

ISI is accused of meddling in Pakistani politics. The late Benazir Bhutto, who often was thwarted by Pakistan’s spooks, always scolded me, “you and your beloved generals at ISI.” But before Musharraf, ISI was the Third World’s most efficient, professional intelligence agency. It defends Pakistan against internal and external subversion by India’s powerful spy agency, RAW, and by Iran. ISI works closely with CIA and the Pentagon, but also must serve Pakistan’s interests, which often are not identical to Washington’s.

The last ISI director general I knew was the tough, highly capable Lt.-Gen. Mahmood Ahmed. He was purged by the new dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, because Washington felt Mahmood was insufficiently responsive to U.S. interests. Ensuing ISI directors were all pre-approved by Washington. All senior ISI veterans deemed “Islamist” or too nationalistic by Washington were purged, leaving ISI’s upper ranks top heavy with yes men and paper passers.

Even so, there is strong opposition inside ISI to Washington’s bribing and arm-twisting the Musharraf dictatorship into waging war against fellow Pakistanis and gravely damaging Pakistan’s national interests.

ISI’s primary duty is defending Pakistan. Pashtun tribesmen on the border sympathizing with their fellow Taliban Pashtun in Afghanistan are Pakistanis. Many, like the legendary Jalaluddin Haqqani, are old U.S. allies and freedom fighters from the 1980s.

TRIBAL UPRISINGS

Violence and uprisings in these tribal areas are not caused by “terrorism,” but directly result from the U.S.-led occupation of Afghanistan and Washington’s forcing the hated Musharraf regime to attack its own people.

ISI is trying to restrain pro-Taliban Pashtun tribesmen while dealing with growing U.S. attacks into Pakistan that threaten a wider war.

India, Pakistan’s bitter foe, has an army of agents in Afghanistan and is arming, backing and financing the Karzai puppet regime in Kabul. Pakistan’s historic strategic interests in Afghanistan have been undermined by the U.S. occupation. The U.S., Canada and India are trying to eliminate Pakistani influence in Afghanistan.

ISI, many of whose officers are Pashtun, has every right to warn Pakistani citizens of impending U.S. air attacks that kill large numbers of civilians.

But ISI also has another vital mission. Preventing Pakistan’s Pashtun (15% to 20% of the population of 165 million) from rekindling the old “Greater Pashtunistan” movement calling for union of the Pashtun tribes of Pakistan and Afghanistan — divided by British imperialism — into a new Pashtun nation. That would tear apart Pakistan and invite Indian military intervention.

Washington’s bull-in-a-china-shop behaviour pays no heeds to such realities.

Instead, Washington demonizes faithful old allies, ISI and Pakistan, while supporting Afghanistan’s communists and drug dealers, and allowing India to stir the Afghan pot — all for the sake of new energy pipelines.

As Henry Kissinger cynically noted, being America’s ally is more dangerous than being its enemy.

Copyright © 2008, Canoe Inc.

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