Posts Tagged ‘President Asif Ali Zardari’

Newer Entries »

A US-NATO War In Pakistan? – An Anatomy of the Current Crisis

September 24, 2008

Published on Tuesday, September 23, 2008 by CommonDreams.org

by Alan Nasser

On Saturday evening, the Marriott hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan, one of the city’s two most luxurious hotels, located near the presidential office, the parliament building, and a host of foreign embassies, was devastated by a bomb blast that left fifty three dead, including the Czech ambassador and two U.S. Defense Department officials.

The recent background to this latest in a series of increasingly sophisticated and bold insurgent strikes is revealing: since September 3, the U.S. has launched ground incursions and six missile attacks in Pakistan’s border regions. The U.S.-NATO aim is to cripple supporters along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border supportive of the anti-occupation resistance in Afghanistan.

The destruction of the Marriott was the latest response to Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari’s complicity with Washington in the military assaults on the perceived center of insurgent support in Pakistan, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), including the North-West Frontier Provinces (NWFP). Just hours before the Marriott blast Zardari told the country’s parliament that he is determined to free Pakistan from “the shackles of terrorism.”

This pledge confirmed Zardari’s determination to continue to order the Pakistani military, an institution harboring more than a few sympathers with the insurgents, to launch assaults on suspected insurgent -“terrorist”- strongholds. It is common knowledge that this policy is a response to pressure from Washington.

Pakistan’s ambassador to Germany, Shahid Kamal, expressed not only his own but the majority resentment against Zardari’s subservience to Washington’s demands on Pakistan when he told The New York Times “This [the Marriott bombing] is a reaction to what is going on in FATA. We have been implementing a reckless and careless policy…. What’s happening in FATA is that Pakistanis are killing Pakistanis.”

Here we see reflected both the popular indignation at the new Pakistani president’s political apeing of his predecessor, the Washington puppet and military dictator Pervez Musharraf, and the deep divisions within Pakistan’s state apparatus regarding Pakistan’s alliance with the U.S.-NATO, which the majority of Pakistanis see as waging a Western-Christian attack on global Islam.

An overview of the backgound to Washington’s stepped-up aggression in Pakistan is in order.

The Bush Doctrine Is Extended to PakistanOn September 9 George W. Bush announced that Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan were “all theatres in the same overall struggle.” This declaration was intended to justify Bush’s July approval of ground assaults by U.S. Special Operations forces inside Pakistan, without Islamabad’s approval.

Thus, the Iraq-Afghanistan disasters are to be sustained and widened to include the sixth most populous country in the world, with 20 million Muslims, the overwhelming majority of whom are known to be increasingly infuriated with the recent succession of air and ground attacks inside Pakistan, and whose government possesses a nuclear arsenal.

Continued . . .

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, Pakistan, Uncategorized, US policy | Leave a Comment »

Pakistan blames US raids for hotel bombing

September 23, 2008

Pakistan President pleads with Bush to reverse policy as BA cancels all flights to country

By Omar Waraich in Islamabad, Anne Penketh and Andrew Buncombe
The Independent, Tuesday, 23 September 2008

Soldiers in Rawalpindi prepare to repatriate the body of the Czech ambassador, Ivo Zdarek, who died in the bombing

EPA

Soldiers in Rawalpindi prepare to repatriate the body of the Czech ambassador, Ivo Zdarek, who died in the bombing

Change font size: A | A | A

The Pakistani President, Asif Ali Zardari, will plead with President George Bush today to change a policy which is being blamed for one of his country’s worst terrorist atrocities.

“We hope the US will change policy because this is what is needed,” said Pakistan’s ambassador to the UK, Wajid Shamsul Hassan, after 53 people were killed and more than 250 injured in the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad. He argued that the Bush administration’s decision to allow cross-border incursions from Afghanistan into Pakistan, including by ground forces on at least one occasion, had been counterproductive “because they are not killing high-value targets, they are killing civilians”.

Mr Zardari’s talks with President Bush in New York, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, have been scheduled amid heightened security fears in the wake of the bombing.

Yesterday BA cancelled all flights to Pakistan as a precaution, although a spokesman said there was no direct threat against the airline, which operates six flights each week. A number of foreign embassies and businesses in the country are also said to be re-examining the security situation.

In the north-western city of Peshawar, Abdul Khaliq Farahi, Afghanistan’s designated ambassador to Pakistan, was kidnapped and his driver killed by unidentified gunmen.

Overnight on Sunday there was further tension on the border when Pakistani troops reportedly fired shots to warn off two US helicopters that were attempting to cross into Pakistan at Alwara Mandi in North Waziristan.

A senior Pakistani official claimed that Pakistan’s senior leaders were to have attended a dinner at the Marriott Hotel but changed their venue to the Prime Minister’s house just hours before the massive bomb devastated the building.

The Interior Ministry chief, Rehman Malik, said the decision to move the location of the dinner for the President and Prime Minister had been kept secret but did not provide details of why the switch was made.

However, it later emerged that the invitations to the Prime Minister’s residence were sent out 10 days ago.

“The dinner was never going to be at the Marriott,” said Talat Hussain, a political analyst and director of current affairs at Aaj TV. “We were all issued invitations well in advance that it was to take place at the Prime Minister’s house. And by claiming that they had managed to move the political leadership to another location, it asks the question, if there is a security threat, is it only for VIPs? Are the rest of us children of a lesser god?”

Mr Malik could not be reached for further clarification last night.

Who carried out Saturday night’s attack remains unclear. Mr Malik had previously said the hotel was attacked by Taliban or al-Qa’ida militants simply because it was a Western target.

But his remarks raise the question as to why – if the government had received intelligence that the Marriott might be attacked – was security at the hotel not immediately increased.

The attack on the hotel and the shockwaves it has sent through Pakistan are just the latest challenges confronting the country’s civilian leadership and its recently elected president, Mr Zardari. Under pressure from the US, Mr Zardari, the widower of the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, has vowed to continue the battle against Islamic militants operating in the country’s tribal areas despite growing resentment inside Pakistan about interference from Washington.

Mr Hassan said that the Pakistan President had gained the support of Gordon Brown in opposing the US raids on Pakistani territory, during talks in London last week.

Mr Zardari is to chair the first meeting of the Friends of Pakistan – grouping the US, Britain and the other G8 countries as well as the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and China – in New York on Friday. Pakistan is looking for short-term help for economic measures to stimulate employment, and longer-term assistance for social development in deprived areas.

53

The number of people killed in suicide bomb attack on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad.

Tags:, , , , , , , ,
Posted in Pakistan, US policy | 1 Comment »

Pakistan’s new president Zardari is a clone of Musharraf

September 15, 2008

Eric Margolis | Edmonton Sun, Sep 14, 2008

The inauguration this week of Pakistan’s new president, Asif Ali Zardari, widower of the slain Benazir Bhutto, should have brought some hope and direction to embattled Pakistan.

It did not. A sense of weary deja vu hung over the event.

Zardari’s first major policy statement was a vow to continue waging the so-called “war on terror” in northwest Pakistan. His choice of the Bush administration’s terminology was a clear message to Washington that he intends to pursue the hated policies of disgraced former U.S.-backed dictator, Pervez Musharraf. Pakistan will continue to dance to Washington’s tune.

In fact, Zardari seems set to inherit the ills of Musharraf’s failed regime. Pakistan is bankrupt, with only 60 days of foreign exchange left to import fuel and food. Half its 165 million people subsist on under $2 daily.

Infusions of $11.2 billion in U.S. aid since 2001, and tens of millions in covert payments, rented the grudging services of Pakistan’s armed and security forces, and halfhearted co-operation of its government.

But 90% of Pakistanis oppose the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, which they, like most Europeans, see as a modern colonial war to secure U.S. domination of Central Asia’s energy. They despised Musharraf for sending 120,000 Pakistani troops to fight pro-Taliban Pashtun tribesmen in northwest Pakistan, killing thousands of civilians in the process, and for enabling the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan.

Now, Zardari, who was helped into power with Washington’s financial and political support, appears set on the same course. Considering only 26% of voters support him, Zardari is heading for major trouble.

Zardari’s refusal to reinstate justices of Pakistan’s supreme court purged by Musharraf is a slap in the face of democracy and further evidence of his fear of indictment over serious corruption accusations that dog him. Widely known as “Mr 10%” from when he was minister of public contracts, Zardari denies any wrongdoing, insisting these charges were politically motivated.

Plans by the U.S. to launch ground attacks inside Pakistan’s Pashtun tribal zone (known as FATA) have ignited a new crisis. Zardari apparently has approved more U.S. raids against his own people. But Pakistan’s powerful chief of staff, Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani, says the nation’s 650,000-man armed forces will not tolerate U.S. violation of its borders. The stage is set for possible head-on clashes between Pakistani and U.S. troops.

Whether Canada will be drawn into fighting in Pakistan’s tribal areas is uncertain. The Harper government’s former defence minister rashly called for Canadian troops to invade Pakistan.

ATTACKING TRUCKS

Truck convoys, upon which the U.S. and NATO depend for fuel, water, and munitions, face increasing attacks by Pakistani pro-Taliban groups as they make their way up to the fabled Khyber Pass.

A vicious cycle is now at play. The U.S. pays Pakistan’s armed forces to attack pro-Taliban tribesmen along the border, and aid the U.S. war in Afghanistan. U.S. and Pakistani warplanes bomb Pashtun villages in FATA.

Furious Pashtuns retaliate by staging bombing attacks against government targets (aka “terrorism”). The government and U.S. launch more attacks as Pakistanis demand their government stop killing its own people.

Musharraf was detested as an American stooge. If Zardari continues Mush’s failed policies, he also will meet the same fate.

The U.S. is about to kick yet another hornets’ nest by ground attacks on Pakistan. Unable to crush growing national resistance to the U.S.-led occupation of Afghanistan and secure planned pipeline routes, the frustrated Bush White House is launching a new conflict when it lacks the soldiers or money to subdue Afghanistan.

Spreading the Afghan War into Pakistan is perilous and foolhardy. It threatens to destabilize and tear apart fragile Pakistan, just as the U.S. has dismembered Iraq. A fragmented Pakistan could tempt India to intervene. Both are nuclear armed.

Asif Zardari is sitting atop a ticking bomb. He needs some new thinking. So do his western patrons, who urgently must end the futile Afghan War before it blows Pakistan apart.

Tags:, , , , , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, Pakistan, US policy | Leave a Comment »

Bush Said to Give Orders Allowing Raids in Pakistan

September 11, 2008

By ERIC SCHMITT and MARK MAZZETTI | The New York Times, Sep 10, 2008

WASHINGTON — President Bush secretly approved orders in July that for the first time allow American Special Operations forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government, according to senior American officials.

The classified orders signal a watershed for the Bush administration after nearly seven years of trying to work with Pakistan to combat the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and after months of high-level stalemate about how to challenge the militants’ increasingly secure base in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

American officials say that they will notify Pakistan when they conduct limited ground attacks like the Special Operations raid last Wednesday in a Pakistani village near the Afghanistan border, but that they will not ask for its permission.

“The situation in the tribal areas is not tolerable,” said a senior American official who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the missions. “We have to be more assertive. Orders have been issued.”

The new orders reflect concern about safe havens for Al Qaeda and the Taliban inside Pakistan, as well as an American view that Pakistan lacks the will and ability to combat militants. They also illustrate lingering distrust of the Pakistani military and intelligence agencies and a belief that some American operations had been compromised once Pakistanis were advised of the details.

The Central Intelligence Agency has for several years fired missiles at militants inside Pakistan from remotely piloted Predator aircraft. But the new orders for the military’s Special Operations forces relax firm restrictions on conducting raids on the soil of an important ally without its permission.

Pakistan’s top army officer said Wednesday that his forces would not tolerate American incursions like the one that took place last week and that the army would defend the country’s sovereignty “at all costs.”

It is unclear precisely what legal authorities the United States has invoked to conduct even limited ground raids in a friendly country. A second senior American official said that the Pakistani government had privately assented to the general concept of limited ground assaults by Special Operations forces against significant militant targets, but that it did not approve each mission.

Continued . . .

Tags:, , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Pakistan, US policy | Leave a Comment »

Newer Entries »