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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—On the evening of Tuesday, 26 September, 2006,
Pakistani strongman Pervez Musharraf walked into the studio of
Comedy Central’s ‘Daily Show’ with Jon Stewart, the first sitting
president anywhere to dare do this political satire show.
Stewart offered his guest some tea and cookies and played the
perfect host by asking, “Is it good?” before springing a surprise:
“Where's Osama bin Laden?"
"I don't know," Musharraf replied, as the audience enjoyed the rare
sight of a strong leader apparently cornered. "You know where he
is?” Musharraf snapped back, “You lead on, we'll follow you."
What Gen. Musharraf didn’t know then is that he really was being
cornered. Some of the smiles that greeted him in Washington and back
home gave no hint of the betrayal that awaited him.
As he completed the remaining part of his U.S. visit, his allies in
Washington and elsewhere, as all evidence suggests now, were
plotting his downfall. They had decided to take a page from the book
of successful ‘color revolutions’ where western governments covertly
used money, private media, student unions, NGOs and international
pressure to stage coups, basically overthrowing individuals not
fitting well with Washington’s agenda.
This recipe proved its success in former Yugoslavia, and more
recently in Georgia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
In Pakistan, the target is a Pakistani president who refuses to play
ball with the United States on Afghanistan, China, and Dr. A.Q.
Khan.
To get rid of him, an impressive operation is underway:
* A carefully crafted media blitzkrieg launched early this year
assailing the Pakistani president from all sides, questioning his
power, his role in Washington’s war on terror and predicting his
downfall.
* Money pumped into the country to pay for organized dissent.
* Willing activists assigned to mobilize and organize accessible
social groups.
* A campaign waged on Internet where tens of mailing lists and ‘news
agencies’ have sprung up from nowhere, all demonizing Musharraf and
the Pakistani military.
* European- and American-funded Pakistani NGOs taking a temporary
leave from their real jobs to work as a makeshift anti-government
mobilization machine.
* U.S. government agencies directly funding some private Pakistani
television networks; the channels go into an open anti-government
mode, cashing in on some manufactured and other real public
grievances regarding inflation and corruption.
* Some of Musharraf’s shady and corrupt political allies feed this
campaign, hoping to stay in power under a weakened president.
* All this groundwork completed and chips in place when the judicial
crisis breaks out in March 2007. Even Pakistani politicians
surprised at a well-greased and well-organized lawyers campaign,
complete with flyers, rented cars and buses, excellent
event-management and media outreach.
* Currently, students are being recruited and organized into a
street movement. The work is ongoing and urban Pakistani students
are being cultivated, especially using popular Internet Web sites
and ‘online hangouts’. The people behind this effort are mostly
unknown and faceless, limiting themselves to organizing sporadic,
small student gatherings in Lahore and Islamabad, complete with
banners, placards and little babies with arm bands for maximum media
effect. No major student association has announced yet that it is
behind these student protests, which is a very interesting fact
glossed over by most journalists covering this story. Only a few
students from affluent schools have responded so far and it’s not
because the Pakistani government’s countermeasures are effective.
They’re not. The reason is that social activism attracts people from
affluent backgrounds, closely reflecting a uniquely Pakistani
phenomenon where local NGOs are mostly founded and run by rich,
westernized Pakistanis.
All of this may appear to be spur-of-the- moment and Musharraf-specific.
But it all really began almost three years ago, when, out of the
blue and recycling old political arguments, Mr. Akbar Bugti launched
an armed rebellion against the Pakistani state, surprising security
analysts by using rockets and other military equipment that
shouldn’t normally be available to a smalltime village thug. Since
then, Islamabad sits on a pile of evidence that links Mr. Bugti’s
campaign to money and ammunition and logistical support from
Afghanistan, directly aided by the Indians and the Karzai
administration, with the Americans turning a blind eye.
For reasons not clear to our analysts yet, Islamabad has kept quiet
on Washington’s involvement with anti-Pakistan elements in
Afghanistan. But Pakistan did send an indirect public message to the
Americans recently.
“We have indications of Indian involvement with anti-state elements
in Pakistan,” declared the spokesman of the Pakistan Foreign Office
in a regular briefing in October. The statement was terse and direct
and the spokesman, Ms. Tasnim Aslam, quickly moved on to other
issues.
This is how a Pakistani official explained Ms. Aslam’s statement:
“What she was really saying is this: We know what the Indians are
doing. They’ve sold the Americans on the idea that [the Indians] are
an authority on Pakistan and can be helpful in Afghanistan. The
Americans have bought the idea and are in on the plan, giving the
Indians a free hand in Afghanistan. What the Americans don’t know is
that we, too, know the Indians very well. Better still, we know
Afghanistan very well. You can’t beat us at our own game.”
Mr. Bugti’s armed rebellion coincided with the Gwadar project
entering its final stages. No coincidence here. Mr. Bugti’s real job
was to scare the Chinese away and scuttle Chinese President Hu
Jintao’s planned visit to Gwadar a few months later to formally
launch the port city.
Gwadar is the pinnacle of Sino-Pakistani strategic cooperation. It’s
a modern port city that is supposed to link Central Asia, western
China, and Pakistan with markets in Mideast and Africa. It’s
supposed to have roads stretching all the way to China. It’s no
coincidence either that China has also earmarked millions of dollars
to renovate the Karakoram Highway linking northern Pakistan to
western China.
Some reports in the American media, however, have accused Pakistan
and China of building a naval base in the guise of a commercial
seaport directly overlooking international oil shipping lanes. The
Indians and some other regional actors are also not comfortable with
this project because they see it as commercial competition.
What Mr. Bugti’s regional and international supporters never
expected is Pakistan moving firmly and strongly to nip his rebellion
in the bud. Even Mr. Bugti himself probably never expected the
Pakistani state to react in the way it did to his betrayal of the
homeland. He was killed in a military operation where scores of his
mercenaries surrendered to Pakistan army soldiers.
U.S. intelligence and their Indian advisors could not cultivate an
immediate replacement for Mr. Bugti. So they moved to Plan B. They
supported Abdullah Mehsud, a Pakistani Taliban fighter held for five
years in Guantanamo Bay, and then handed over back to the Afghan
government, only to return to his homeland, Pakistan, to kidnap two
Chinese engineers working in Balochistan, one of whom was eventually
killed during a rescue operation by the Pakistani government.
Islamabad could not tolerate this shadowy figure, who was creating a
following among ordinary Pakistanis masquerading as a Taliban while
in reality towing a vague agenda. He was rightly eliminated earlier
this year by Pakistani security forces while secretly returning from
Afghanistan after meeting his handlers there. Again, no surprises
here.
SMELLING A RAT
This is where Pakistani political and military officials finally
started smelling a rat. All of this was an indication of a bigger
problem. There were growing indications that, ever since Islamabad
joined Washington’s regional plans, Pakistan was gradually turning
into a ‘besieged-nation’ , heavily targeted by the American media
while being subjected to strategic sabotage and espionage from
Afghanistan.
Afghanistan, under America’s watch, has turned into a vast staging
ground for sophisticated psychological and military operations to
destabilize neighboring Pakistan.
During the past three years, the heat has gradually been turned up
against Pakistan and its military along Pakistan’s western regions:
* A shadowy group called the BLA, a Cold War relic, rose from the
dead to restart a separatist war in southwestern Pakistan.
* Bugti’s death was a blow to neo-BLA, but the shadowy group’s
backers didn’t repent. His grandson, Brahmdagh Bugti, is currently
enjoying a safe shelter in the Afghan capital, Kabul, where he
continues to operate and remote-control his assets in Pakistan.
* Saboteurs trained in Afghanistan have been inserted into Pakistan
to aggravate extremist passions here, especially after the Red
Mosque operation.
* Chinese citizens continue to be targeted by individuals pretending
to be Islamists, when no known Islamic group has claimed
responsibility.
* A succession of ‘religious rebels’ with suspicious foreign links
have suddenly emerged in Pakistan over the past months claiming to
be ‘Pakistani Taliban’. Some of the names include Abdul Rashid
Ghazi, Baitullah Mehsud, and now the Maulana of Swat. Some of them
have used and are using encrypted communication equipment far
superior to what Pakistani military owns.
* Money and weapons have been fed into the religious movements and
al Qaeda remnants in the tribal areas.
Exploiting the situation, assets within the Pakistani media started
promoting the idea that the Pakistani military was killing its own
people. The rest of the unsuspecting media quickly picked up this
message. Some botched American and Pakistani military operations
against Al Qaeda that caused civilian deaths accidentally fed this
media campaign.
This was the perfect timing for the launch of Military, Inc.: Inside
Pakistan’s Military Economy, a book authored by Dr. Ayesha Siddiqa
Agha, a columnist for a Pakistani English-language paper and a
correspondent for ‘Jane’s Defense Weekly’, a private intelligence
service founded by experts close to the British intelligence.
TARGET: PAK MILITARY
The book was launched in Pakistan in early 2007 by Oxford Press.
And, contrary to most reports, it is openly available in Islamabad’s
biggest bookshops. The book portrays the Pakistani military as an
institution that is eating up whatever little resources Pakistan
has.
Pakistani military’s successful financial management, creating
alternate financial sources to spend on a vast military machine and
build a conventional and nuclear near-match with a neighboring
adversary five times larger – an impressive record for any nation by
any standard – was distorted in the book and reduced to a mere
attempt by the military to control the nation’s economy in the same
way it was controlling its politics.
The timing was interesting. After all, it was hard to defend a
military in the eyes of its own proud people when the chief of the
military is ruling the country, the army is fighting insurgents and
extremists who claim to be defending Islam, grumpy politicians are
out of business, and the military’s side businesses, meant to feed
the nation’s military machine, are doing well compared to the shabby
state of the nation’s civilian departments.
A closer look at Ms. Siddiqa, the author, revealed disturbing
information to Pakistani officials. In the months before launching
her book, she was a frequent visitor to India where, as a defense
expert, she cultivated important contacts. On her return, she
developed friendship with an Indian lady diplomat posted in
Islamabad. Both of these activities – travel to India and ties to
Indian diplomats – are not a crime in Pakistan and don’t raise
interest anymore. Pakistanis are hospitable and friendly people and
these qualities have been amply displayed to the Indians during the
four-year-old peace process.
What is interesting is that Ms. Siddiqa left her car in the house of
the said Indian diplomat during one of her recent trips to London.
And, according to a report, she stayed in London at a place owned by
an individual linked to the Indian lady diplomat friend in
Islamabad.
The point here is this: Who assigned her to investigate the
Pakistani Armed Forces and present a distorted image of a proud an
efficient Pakistani institution?
From 1988 to 2001, Dr. Siddiqa worked in the Pakistan civil service,
the Pakistani civil bureaucracy. Her responsibilities included
dealing with Military Accounts, which come under the Pakistan
Ministry of Defense. She had thirteen years of rich experience in
dealing with the budgetary matters of the Pakistani military and
people working in this area.
Dr. Siddiqa received a year-long fellowship to research and write a
book in the United States. There are strong indications that some of
her Indian contacts played a role in arranging financing for her
book project through a paid fellowship. The final manuscript of her
book was vetted at a publishing office in New Delhi.
All of these details are insignificant if detached from the real
issue at hand. And the issue is the demonization of the Pakistani
military as an integral part of the media siege around Pakistan,
with the American media leading the way in this campaign.
Some of the juicy details of this campaign include:
* The attempt by Dr. Siddiqa to pitch junior officers against senior
officers in Pakistan Armed Forces by alleging discrimination in the
distribution of benefits. Apart from being malicious and unfounded,
her argument was carefully designed to generate frustration and
demoralize Pakistani soldiers.
* The American media insisting on handing over Dr. A. Q. Khan to the
United States so that a final conviction against the Pakistani
military can be secured.
* Mrs. Benazir Bhutto demanding after returning to Pakistan that the
ISI be restructured; and in a press conference during her house
arrest in Lahore in November she went as far as asking Pakistan army
officers to revolt against the army chief, a damning attempt at
destroying a professional army from within.
Some of this appears to be eerily similar to the campaign waged
against the Pakistani military in 1999, when, in July that year, an
unsigned full page advertisement appeared in major American
newspapers with the following headline: “A Modern Rogue Army With
Its Finger On The Nuclear Button.”
Till this day, it is not clear who exactly paid for such an
expensive newspaper full-page advertisement. But one thing is clear:
the agenda behind that advertisement is back in action.
Strangely, just a few days before Mrs. Bhutto’s statements about
restructuring the ISI and her open call to army officers to stage a
mutiny against their leadership, the American conservative magazine
The Weekly Standard interviewed an American security expert who
offered similar ideas:
"A large number of ISI agents who are responsible for helping the
Taliban and al Qaeda should be thrown in jail or killed. What I
think we should do in Pakistan is a parallel version of what Iran
has run against us in Iraq: giving money [and] empowering actors.
Some of this will involve working with some shady characters, but
the alternative—sending U..S. forces into Pakistan for a sustained
bombing campaign—is worse.” Steve Schippert, Weekly Standard, Nov.
2007.
In addition to these media attacks, which security experts call
‘psychological operations’, the American media and politicians have
intensified over the past year their campaign to prepare the
international public opinion to accept a western intervention in
Pakistan along the lines of Iraq and Afghanistan:
* Newsweek came up with an entire cover story with a single
storyline: Pakistan is a more dangerous place than Iraq.
* Senior American politicians, Republican and Democrat, have argued
that Pakistan is more dangerous than Iran and merits similar
treatment. On 20 October, senator Joe Biden told ABC News that
Washington needs to put soldiers on the ground in Pakistan and
invite the international community to join in. "We should be in
there," he said. "We should be supplying tens of millions of dollars
to build new schools to compete with the madrassas. We should be in
there building democratic institutions. We should be in there, and
get the rest of the world in there, giving some structure to the
emergence of, hopefully, the reemergence of a democratic process.”
* The International Crisis Group (ICG) has recommended gradual
sanctions on Pakistan similar to those imposed on Iran, e.g.
slapping travel bans on Pakistani military officers and seizing
Pakistani military assets abroad.
* The process of painting Pakistan’s nuclear assets as pure evil
lying around waiting for some do-gooder to come in and ‘secure’ them
has reached unprecedented levels, with the U.S. media again
depicting Pakistan as a nation incapable of protecting its nuclear
installations. On 22 October, Jane Harman from the U.S. House
Intelligence panel gave the following statement: "I think the U.S.
would be wise – and I trust we are doing this – to have contingency
plans [to seize Pakistan’s nuclear assets], especially because
should [Musharraf] fall, there are nuclear weapons there.”
* The American media has now begun discussing the possibility of
Pakistan breaking up and the possibility of new states of
‘Balochistan’ and ‘Pashtunistan’ being carved out of it.
Interestingly, one of the first acts of the shady Maulana of Swat
after capturing a few towns was to take down the Pakistani flag from
the top of state buildings and replacing them with his own party
flag.
* The ‘chatter’ about President Musharraf’s eminent fall has also
increased dramatically in the mainly American media, which has been
very generous in marketing theories about how Musharraf might
“disappear” or be “removed” from the scene. According to some
Pakistani analysts, this could be an attempt to prepare the public
opinion for a possible assassination of the Pakistani president.
* Another worrying thing is how American officials are publicly
signaling to the Pakistanis that Mrs. Benazir Bhutto has their
backing as the next leader of the country. Such signals from
Washington are not only a kiss of death for any public leader in
Pakistan, but the Americans also know that their actions are
inviting potential assassins to target Mrs. Bhutto. If she is killed
in this way, there won’t be enough time to find the real culprit,
but what’s certain is that unprecedented international pressure will
be placed on Islamabad while everyone will use their local assets to
create maximum internal chaos in the country. A dress rehearsal of
this scenario has already taken place in October when no less than
the U.N. Security Council itself intervened to ask the international
community to “assist” in the investigations into the assassination
attempt on Mrs. Bhutto on 18 October. This generous move was
sponsored by the U.S. and, interestingly, had no input from Pakistan
which did not ask for help in investigations in the first place.
Some Pakistani security analysts privately say that American
‘chatter’ about Musharraf or Bhutto getting killed is a serious
matter that can’t be easily dismissed. Getting Bhutto killed can
generate the kind of pressure that could result in permanently
putting the Pakistani military on a back foot, giving Washington
enough room to push for installing a new pliant leadership in
Islamabad.
Having Musharraf killed isn’t a bad option either. The unknown
Islamists can always be blamed and the military will not be able to
put another soldier at the top, and circumstances will be created to
ensure that either Mrs. Bhutto or someone like her is eased into
power.
The Americans are very serious this time. They cannot let Pakistan
get out of their hands. They have been kicked out of Uzbekistan last
year, where they were maintaining bases. They are in trouble in
Afghanistan and Iraq. Iran continues to be a mess for them and
Russia and China are not making it any easier. Pakistan must be
‘secured’ at all costs.
This is why most Pakistanis have never seen American diplomats in
Pakistan active like this before. And it’s not just the current U.S.
ambassador, who has added one more address to her other
most-frequently- visited address in Karachi, Mrs. Bhutto’s house.
The new address is the office of GEO, one of two news channels shut
down by Islamabad for not signing the mandatory code-of-conduct.
Thirty-eight other channels are operating and no one has censored
the newspapers. But never mind this. The Americans have developed a
‘thing’ for GEO. No solace of course for ARY, the other banned
channel.
Now there’s also one Bryan Hunt, the U.S. consul general in Lahore,
who wears the national Pakistani dress, the long shirt and baggy
trousers, and is moving around these days issuing tough warnings to
Islamabad and to the Pakistani government and to President Musharraf
to end emergency rule, resign as army chief and give Mrs. Bhutto
access to power.
PAKISTAN’S OPTIONS
So what should Pakistan do in the face of such a structured campaign
to bring Pakistan down on its knees and forcibly install a
pro-Washington administration in Islamabad?
There is increasing talk in Islamabad these days about Pakistan’s
new tough stand in the face of this malicious campaign.
As a starter, Islamabad blew the wind out of the visit of Mr. John
Negroponte, the no. 2 man in the U.S. State Department, who came to
Pakistan last week “to deliver a tough message” to the Pakistani
president. Musharraf, to his credit, told him he won’t end emergency
rule until all objectives are achieved.
These objectives include:
* Cleaning up our northern and western parts of the country of all
foreign operatives and their domestic pawns.
* Ensuring that Washington’s plan for regime-change doesn’t succeed.
* Purging the Pakistani media of all those elements that were
willing or unwilling accomplices in the plan to destabilize the
country.
Musharraf has also told Washington publicly that “Pakistan is more
important than democracy or the constitution.” This is a bold
position. This kind of boldness would have served Musharraf a lot
had it come a little earlier. But even now, his media management
team is unable to make the most out of it.
Washington will not stand by watching as its plan for regime change
in Islamabad goes down the drain. In case the Americans insist on
interfering in Pakistani affairs, Islamabad, according to my
sources, is looking at some tough measures:
* Cutting off oil supplies to U.S. military in Afghanistan.
Pakistani officials are already enraged at how Afghanistan has
turned into a staging ground for sabotage in Pakistan. If Islamabad
continues to see Washington acting as a bully, Pakistani officials
are seriously considering an announcement where Pakistan, for the
first time since October 2001, will deny the United States use of
Pakistani soil and air space to transport fuel to Afghanistan.
* Reviewing Pakistan’s role in the war on terror. Islamabad needs to
fight terrorists on its border with Afghanistan. But our methods
need to be different to Washington’s when it comes to our domestic
extremists. This is where Islamabad parts ways with Washington.
Pakistani officials are considering the option of withdrawing from
the war on terror while maintaining Pakistan's own war against the
terrorists along Afghanistan' s border.
* Talks with the Taliban. Pakistan has no quarrel with Afghanistan’s
Taliban. They are Kabul’s internal problem. But if reaching out to
Afghan Taliban’s Mullah Omar can have a positive impact on
rebellious Pakistani extremists, then this step should be taken. The
South Koreans can talk to the Taliban. Karzai has also called for
talks with them. It is time that Islamabad does the same.
The Americans have been telling everyone in the world that they have
paid Pakistan $10 billion dollars over the past five years. They
might think this gives them the right to decide Pakistan’s destiny.
What they don’t tell the world is how Pakistan’s help secured for
them their biggest footprint ever in energy-rich Central Asia.
If they forget, Islamabad can always remind them by giving them the
same treatment that Uzbekistan did last year. |