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Posted by admin in "Jihadi" Outfits of Terrorism, Asif Zardari Crook Par Excellance, BOOT THE SCOUNDRELS OR SHOWDAZ, Corruption, Defense, Domestic Policy, Foreign Policy, Looters and Scam Artists, Pakistan's Ruling Elite Feudals Industrialists, Pakistan-US Relations, PML (N) CORRUPTION on March 2nd, 2013
Iqbal Baig, the biggest heroin smuggler to US is building a Shopping Arcade on Hall Road in Lahore. He has torn down historic and architecturally unique flats built in 1920s and 30s, which were part of Pre-Partition Lakhshmi Mansion. Therefore, another, beautiful landmark of Lahore has been victim of corruption and malfeasance of the Sharif brothers dynasty.
How did Iqbal Baig manage to get approval for destruction of a historic landmark? Simply, by bribing the Punjab Government, whereby he was able to get a permit to destroy these historical buildings. This is another example of Punjab Government’s expedient cooperation with crooked builders like Malik Riaz and Iqbal Baig.
Hall Road shopkeepers have watched helplessly as this drug lord rolls over their property rights and create clouds of dust and debris in one of the biggest electronics market in Asia. The Punjab Government is in cahoots with this drug smuggler, who finances his activities by money laundering and uses mules to smuggle drugs to the West.
Why is the West silent on the rapid growth of the Empire of Drug Baron, Iqbal Baig in Lahore, Pakistan? What is the nature of relationship, between Shahbaz Sharif & the Sharif Family with this known drug kingpin? These are the questions, which have caused considerable distress in the minds of Hall roads business community. But, these concerns may be short lived, as Iqbal Baig can use strong-arm tactics and considerable financial clout to silence his most vocal critics.
Many businessmen on Hall Road are appalled at the blatant criminal activities of a known heroin smuggler. It seems the US DEA has all but forgotten about Iqbal Baig’s narcotic empire and his partnership with Al Qaeda and Taliban? However, this criminal is more dangerous than ever, because now he is acquiring a cover of legitimacy. Although, convicted in a US court, this criminal will try to beat the system through use of couriers, instead of getting himself involved in heroin smuggling. Nowadays, due to a weak and corrupt government, Pakistan is awash with narcotics. Iqbal Baig will continue to indulge in his drug smuggling activities, and finance them with money earned through of legitimate business enterprise, like the Hall Road Project. This also provides a conduit to launder drug money and stash it in Middle Eastern Banks. In the process people like Iqbal Baig destroy not only young peoples lives in the West, but also in Pakistan. They buy greedy politicians like the Nawaz Sharif by “donating,” to their electioneering. It is a creative form of indirect bribery, where the “obligated” politician looks the other way at the illegal activities of their benefactors.
It is imperative that US Ambassador pressure the Punjab Government to crack down on such criminals turned legitimate entrepreneurs. Otherwise, they will come to bite back by destroying the lives of people in East and West in the garb of their worst terrorist nightmares. Heroin smuggling, legitimate business, and terrorism are an explosive mix, which the global community should help Pakistan, nip in the bud. However, Pakistani politicians are always drooling for illegal gratifications in the form of bank deposits in Dubai, Cayman Islands, and Isle of Wight made by the likes of Iqbal Baig, Tapi, and Malik Riaz.
Iqbal Baig is well known to most of Lahorites, who often wonder, why US, which has waged a War on Terror, does not protest to the Punjab government, about the money laundering, property acquisition, and funneling of drug money into legitimate businesses. In Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, and Mexico, US has used its DEA agents to stop drug kingpins from infiltrating legitimate commercial enterprises. But, in Pakistan, heroin smugglers and money launderers are roaming around scott- free. Almost every person in Lahore knows about this drug kingpin and are surprised that the US Embassy or the Lahore Consulate or DEA have not raised Malik Iqbal’s burgeoning empires issue with the Pakistan or at least the Punjab Government. It is non-productive for DEA to chase small time drug mules, and leaving the barracudas among heroin. Smugglers untouched. It also earns the ill will of a nation, where US is spending considerable amount of money to build its image. US government should proactively, coaxing the Punjab Government to cut off money laundering activities of the Iqbal Baig Empire. This will go a long way in improving the image of US in Lahore, a city, which is the political capital of Pakistan. At the same time it will also earn the considerable goodwill from the people of Lahore, where the image of US suffered during the Raymond Davis Affair. And it will also go a long way in restoring good relations with the people of Pakistan. Otherwise, the question, as to why people of Pakistan, will remain unanswered.
The Taliban and tobacco
By Aamir Latif and Kate Willson June 29, 2009, 10:15 am
http://www.icij.org/project/tobacco-underground/taliban-and-tobacco
Tumman Khan is a poor, aging farmer who tills another man’s land in the restive northern tribal belt of Pakistan. For him and others in the Khyber Agency region, Sahib Ayub Afridi is considered an angel. The illiterate 70-year-old tribal leader finances construction of water pumps, streets and lighting, builds mosques and madrasahs, and supports the penniless and widowed.
But there’s another side to Afridi.
A one-time notorious drug kingpin who in the 1980s armed the Afghan Mujahidin at the CIA’s behest, Afridi churns out millions of counterfeit cigarettes to smuggle across central Asia, China, and Africa, and splits the proceeds with the pro-Taliban militants who control the swath of mountainous borderland, according to Pakistani intelligence and customs officials. The leaders of some of these militant groups are on the U.S. most-wanted list in the region — among them, Baitullah Mehsud, who has claimed responsibility for bloody attacks in Pakistan and has sworn to strike Washington, D.C. U.S. officials have responded by putting a $5 million price on Mehsud’s head.
A tax for terrorism
As government sanctions restrict traditional sources of terrorist financing, Pakistani militant groups increasingly rely on proceeds from counterfeit cigarette production and smuggling, intelligence sources say. Although income figures are rough estimates at best, profits from the illicit cigarette trade account for as much as 20 percent of funding for these militant groups, second only to heroin production, according to terrorism experts in Pakistan. “Taliban and other militant groups do not have to do much,” says Ikram Sehgal, a senior defense and security analyst who heads SMS Security, Pakistan’s leading private security company. “They simply receive taxes on a regular basis from owners of illegal and legal cigarette factories and later for the safe passage they provide to the convoys.”
Sahib Ayub Afridi: top cigarette counterfeiter in Pakistan.
The Afridi case is part of a broader trend of terrorism groups relying on contraband to finance their activities, experts say. Even if efforts to cut the region’s booming heroin production are successful — an unlikely prospect — the lucrative tobacco trade suggests how hard it will be to stanch funding to terrorists and insurgents in areas far from government control. The world’s longest-running civil wars are fueled by contraband according to a 2002 study by Stanford University’s James Fearon. Cocaine smuggling has largely propelled FARC’s 40-year insurgency in Colombia. Diamonds have funded civil wars in Sierra Leone and Angola. Opium has led to drawn-out conflicts in Afghanistan and Burma.
In the badlands of the Afghan-Pakistan border, the challenges are particularly daunting. U.S. President Barack Obama recently deemed the region “the most dangerous place in the world” for Americans. The growing power of the Taliban and other militant groups, combined with new waves of terrorism, has put Pakistan’s weak government on the defensive. The risks are indeed high: as much as two-thirds of the nuclear-armed country is ruled not by a central government but by insurgents, militants, tribal leaders, or warlords.
Overlooked in the Pakistani Taliban’s growing power is the role of tobacco smuggling.
As U.S. and NATO forces attacked the Taliban in Afghanistan, the predominantly Pashtun fighters increasingly sought sanctuary along the ungoverned border of Pakistan. The Khyber Agency — a border province boasting the most-traveled trade route between the two countries — is also the hotbed of cigarette counterfeiting in Pakistan. And its renegade factories have become the region’s largest employer, according to Pakistani intelligence sources.
Fateh Mohammed, a senior Pakistani tax official, said counterfeit cigarette production is on the rise, costing the government an estimated $88 million annually in lost taxes. He said the excise department does what it can, but the factories are “out of reach.”
“It’s hard for us to curb the sale and production of counterfeit cigarettes as we neither have the manpower and other resources to do that,” Mohammed said. “Nor do we have any reach to the tribal belt where this business is flourishing.”
Illicit cigarette production in the strife-torn tribal belt, a semiautonomous region of Pashtun tribes bordering Afghanistan, accounts for an estimated 22 percent of all consumption in Pakistan, a country with cigarette taxes among the highest in the world — accounting for 87 percent of the cost per pack. Mohammad Khosa, who heads the anti-counterfeiting efforts for British American Tobacco in the region, estimated that the region’s factories pump out some 15 billion cigarettes a year, a large portion of which end up smuggled to neighboring Afghanistan.
“Smuggling has long existed because of physical proximity to land routes going into Central Asia and beyond,” said Sumit Ganguly, professor and Pakistan expert at Indiana University. “On top of that, there are very poor people. The two dovetail very neatly.”
Trade routes between Afghanistan and Pakistan developed over thousands of years with no governmental controls. It wasn’t until the British drew a 1600-mile border between the two countries, in 1893, that a culture of illicit trade flourished. Today, Pashtuns pay little attention to the poorly marked borders that separate the rugged terrain between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Following the October 2001, U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, smuggling contraband goods across to Pakistan provided the Taliban with a major source of financing. In his final story published in The Wall Street Journal before his January 2002 abduction, Daniel Pearl reported on how the group “taxed” goods being smuggled across the border. The militants skimmed between $35 million and $75 million off exports of Marlboro cigarettes, Sony TVs, and Gillette shaving cream, Pearl wrote.
Today, no figure is more deeply mired in the region’s contraband trade than Haji Ayub Afridi, a tribal leader of the region-ruling Afridi clan, which has long controlled trade routes into Afghanistan and whose name is synonymous with trade and transport throughout Pakistan.
Who’s Who of militants
Afridi’s sweeping luxury estate near the Afghan border is enclosed by 20-foot high walls topped with concertina wire, guarded by a private army and protected by an anti-aircraft battery. Authorities point to a pair of lucrative, yet nameless, cigarette factories that Afridi owns, known locally as “One More Cigarette,” and to a number of cigarette-filled warehouses he is said to own near Peshawar — the region’s largest city, 25 miles east of his home. Because most of his business is in the names of associates, the full extent of Afridi’s assets is unknown, but officials believe he operates as many as six factories.
Afridi churns out copies of an array of Western brands — Marlboros, Camels, Benson & Hedges, and 555s, among them, officials say. The Marlboros and Camels are smuggled into Afghanistan and the central Asian countries of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Benson & Hedges is favored for shipment to South Africa, while counterfeit 555s are moved through the Khunjarab pass into China. Afridi also produces low-quality local brands One-Touch and Datchi, which are popular in Afghanistan.
Tobacco counterfeiter Afridi lives in a heavily guarded compound near the Afghan border.
Afridi pays protection money to a Who’s Who of the region’s militant leaders, according to Pakistani intelligence. In exchange for operating his factories in the Khyber Agency, sources say, Afridi pays $36,000 a month — the average combined annual income of 47 Pakistanis — to Mangal Bagh, leader of the area’s ruling pro-Taliban militia.
A former bus token taker and fellow member of the Afridi clan, warlord Bagh commands thousands of heavily-armed Islamist militants through his group Lashkar-i-Islam (Army of Islam). In addition to collecting taxes from the likes of Afridi, the pro-Taliban group specializes in kidnapping for ransom. Early in his smuggling racket, Afridi refused to cut Bagh a percentage of his proceeds, instead paying protection taxes to a rival Taliban group, officials say. The two groups clashed in 2008, leaving 19 dead. Following the battle, Afridi agreed to pay Bagh.
Bagh may be the most moderate militant leader on Afridi’s payoff list. Afridi also pays a pair of rival Taliban factions in the neighboring tribal region of Waziristan, along the Afghan border to the south, who are actively fighting U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan. One of the men, Mullah Nazir, opposes fighting against Pakistan security forces. But his rival, Baitullah Mehsud — leader of Pakistan’s Taliban movement — has advocated attacks against the Pakistani government and is blamed by Islamabad for ordering the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
Mehsud’s troops also provide a safe haven for al-Qaeda forces fighting in Afghanistan, and his militancy has made him a prime target for the Americans. But that has not deterred the Taliban leader; he recently joined forces with Nazir and a third warlord who, together, now control much of the region. The rival groups agreed to “fight the U.S. together, because we are concerned over the surge in American troops in Afghanistan,” Nazir told local tribal chiefs, according to the Daily Times, an English-language newspaper in the region.
Afridi isn’t the only counterfeit cigarette producer in the tribal belt. Smugglers also transport cigarettes from illegal factories in neighboring provinces of Kohat and Bannu into Afghanistan through the border town of Miramshah. The area is in the grip of an al-Qaeda militia of ethnic Uzbeks loyal to Mehsud. Pakistani intelligence sources say cigarette smugglers pay the militant groups up to 20 percent commission for each convoy. American and Japanese model trucks leave the sprawling, high-walls cigarette factories almost daily, while bigger convoys of five to seven trucks leave twice a week, local residents say.
On the lam
Afridi is no stranger to the black market. During the 1960s he drove truckloads of smuggled gold through the Khyber Pass. His partner was a slightly older gold smuggler named Iqbal Baig. The two prominent tribal members would remain close business partners as they expanded into currency, hashish, and heroin smuggling.
The Torkham Crossing, a heavily traveled trade route between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
In the 1980s, Afridi is credited with orchestrating the heroin trade between eastern Afghanistan, through the Khyber Pass, to the Afridi clan in Pakistan. Pakistani and Belgian authorities first sought his arrest in 1983, after tying the smuggler to 17 tons of hashish in a southwest Pakistan warehouse and another 6.5 tons in Antwerp, Belgium. But when 50 Pakistani police sought to arrest Afridi in 1990, they were met by an armed militia and quickly retreated, according to U.S. court records.
Despite his record as a narcotics trafficker, the CIA had its own uses for Afridi. In the 1980s, he was one of many Pashtun tribal leaders tapped by the agency to help finance and arm the Mujahidin struggle against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, according to The New Dimension of International Terrorism by former Harvard University fellow and U.S. Army Colonel Stefan M. Aubrey. After the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan, Afridi turned his attention homeward. He was elected to Parliament in 1990 — reportedly after paying up to $600 per vote to represent the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
Through it all, Afridi never stopped dealing drugs, according to U.S. court records. He ordered subordinates to truck hashish to Karachi in Bedford trucks and old tanker trucks. Meanwhile, he and his partners made millions smuggling tons of heroin and hashish across the globe — through India to London, Paris, and Amsterdam, packed amid frozen fish into the Netherlands, through Singapore and Hong Kong, and across the Atlantic to the United States and Canada.
Afridi, through his longstanding contacts in the drug world, became the key supplier to the biggest narcotics ring in Pakistan, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. The DEA branded Afridi’s syndicate “the single most prolific heroin and hashish drug trafficking organization in Pakistan.” The amounts were indeed impressive: 57 tons of hashish into the Netherlands in a single shipment; 30 tons of hashish to California; and massive amounts of heroin around the world.
At the center of the operation was the notorious Iqbal Baig–a respected, well-known businessman whose assets included cinemas, textile factories, commercial property, and a pizzeria. And at Baig’s side was Tarik Butt, his brother-in-law. Butt took over a battery manufacturing plant in 1986 after its owner — smuggling heroin into Vienna on Butt’s behalf — died from a drug-filled balloon exploding in his stomach. The factory became “a social club of misfits, thugs, murderers and dope dealers,” said a New Delhi-based agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration.
By the 1990s, however, Afridi’s criminal past was catching up with him. With authorities threatening prosecution, he went into hiding and was soon splitting his time between Pakistani tribal areas, Afghanistan, and the United Arab Emirates.
It was a trio of hash shipments — 58 tons in all — that finally led to Afridi’s undoing.
Children line up with lunch buckets at a refugee camp near Swabi, Pakistan, during spring 2009 fighting in the Swat valley.
Hidden amid fish, tires and sacks of rice, the drugs were sent to Long Island, New York, and Newport News, Virginia, and led to the arrest of one Stewart Newton, Afridi’s U.S. connection. Arrested in 1988, Newton was sentenced to 47 years in prison, but served only eight after agreeing to cooperate with prosecutors in the case against the Pakistani smugglers. Also indicted were Butt and Baig, whom Pakistan extradited to the United States in 1995.
Afridi stayed out of reach, hiding in the tribal zone. But fearful of arrest by Pakistani officials and concerned his now-arrested co-conspirators would turn against him, he negotiated with the DEA for a year before finally turning himself in.
Now-retired DEA agent Gregory D. Lee recalls fielding odd questions from Afridi’s go-between during that time.
“He would ask crazy questions like, ‘how many times a day will I be beaten by the Marshals?’ and ‘will I be able to stay at the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan,” Lee said during a recent phone interview. If he wasn’t permitted to serve out his sentence at the four-star hotel, Afridi wanted to know if he could employ a personal cook at the prison. “He had no idea what to expect.”
In 1997, Afridi pleaded guilty to smuggling hashish and was sentenced to five years in prison and a $100,000 fine. But the Pakistani godfather served only two years in U.S. jail, paid just $425, and in 1999 he was deported to Pakistan, where officials promptly arrested him for an earlier smuggling case.
Although sentenced in Pakistan to seven years in prison, Afridi was released without explanation shortly after 9/11. Soon after his release, he traveled to Afghanistan to unite anti-Taliban warlords, according to senior Pakistani intelligence and anti-narcotics officials. His attempts failed, they say, and the aging Afridi returned home.
It is back home, in the Khyber Agency, where Ayub Afridi has refocused his attentions. Gone are the hashish and heroin shipments, officials say. The old smuggler has found an easier racket to ply, with few penalties and easy profits — the untaxed cigarette trade. Reached by telephone, in English and Urdu, an elderly man at Afridi’s home denied he was Afridi and declined to comment further.
Nor will others talk openly about Afridi in his native land. Journalists do not write about the man, and even law enforcement officials speak about him in hushed tones. But the poor of the Khyber Agency are not so reticent. Despite his years in Afghanistan, in jails and throughout his smuggling exploits, Afridi didn’t forget the poor who surrounded him, farmer Tumman Khan told a visiting reporter. Even when Afridi was locked away in an American prison cell, the poor and widowed continued to receive monthly checks on his behalf.
“Haji Sahib is an angel for poor people like us,” Khan said. “We don’t know much about his business, whether legal or illegal. What we know is that he has helped us when no one was there to do that.”
Posted by admin in Pakistan Security and Defence: Enemy & Threats (Internal & External), SHIA +SUNNI = MUSLIMS=ISLAM=PEACE, THE NEOCON STRATEGY IN PROCESS on March 1st, 2013
Pakistan is a nation born on the 27th of Ramazan.
It’s birth and survival is miracle and its safety is under Allah’s protection.
From time to time Shaitan’s in human shape spread rumours to frighten and throw doubt unto believers, so the best approach is to know
wherein lies the source of such news.
And they planned and Allah (also) planned, and Allah is the best of planners. Surah Âl ‘Imran (3:54)
In an article titled ‘A mutiny Grows in the Punjab’, Anatol Lieven (author of Pakistan: A Hard Country) wrote the following: Division of Punjab is part of plan for disintegration of Pakistan.”
These articles are coming in torrents (so they should be taken with a grain of salt), since Pakistan and Iran signed a the gas pipeline agreement and transfer of Gwadar Port Operations to a Chinese Company.
In an article titled ‘A mutiny Grows in the Punjab’, Anatol Lieven (author of Pakistan: A Hard Country) wrote the following:
“The U.S. strategy toward Pakistan has been focused on trying to get Islamabad to give serious help to Washington’s campaign against the Afghan Taliban. There are two rather large problems with this approach. The first is that it is never going to happen because Pakistani strategic calculations and the feelings of the country’s population make it impossible…. except in return for U.S. help against India—which Washington also cannot deliver.
“The second problem is that it gets America’s real priorities in the region back to front. The war in Afghanistan is a temporary U.S. interest, in which the chief concern is not the reality of victory or defeat as such (if only because neither can be clearly defined) but preserving some appearance of success in order to avoid the damage to American military prestige that would result from obvious failure. By contrast, preserving the Pakistani state and containing the terrorist threat to the West from Pakistan is a permanent vital interest not only of the U.S. military and political establishments but of every American citizen.
“While the prospects for any real success in Afghanistan look gloomy, but if saving Pakistan is the real priority, then things do not look so desperate. This is because while getting large numbers of Pakistanis to help America is virtually impossible, getting enough Pakistanis to preserve their existing state is much easier. To a great extent, this is for negative reasons: the elites and indeed the masses have an acute sense of the horror from the country’s collapse. However, a degree of positive loyalty is also present in one key institution and in one key province: namely the military and the Punjab. If Pakistan is to be broken as a state, it will be on the streets of Lahore and other great Punjabi cities, not in the Pashtun mountains.”
Unlike US think tanks and most American writers, who subjectively project Indo-Zionist interests in the region, Anatol Lieven is British, and objective. His article was published nearly two years ago in ‘National Interest’ of March-April 2011, A lot has changed since; Britain has assumed a central role in resolving the Afghan imbroglio and it is the view of Anal Lieven that appears to have prevailed. Disintegration of Pakistan is still on the agenda but it is hoped it will follow rather than precede heightened Civil War in Afghanistan that is likely to result from NATO/US withdrawal.
Pakistan has been ruled by a four party coalition for five years – Zardari League, MQM, ANP and JUI(F) – all of who have a history of opposition to Pakistan. President Asif Ali Zardari is the head of the PPP although his spoilt son – Bilawal – is formally the chairman of the Party. The father of Asif Zardari – Hakim Ali – was the President of ANP in Sindh after he was expelled from the PPP allegedly for trying to blackmail late Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (ZAB). No one has revealed why was ZAB being blackmailed but it is well known that he was so angry with Hakim Ali that he sold all his assets and moved to the UK only to return after the execution of ZAB.
The relationship Asif Zardari with his wife Benazir was characterized by the Hollywood film ‘sleeping with the enemy’. But my point here is not their marital relationship; my point is that Asif Zardari has strong nerves; he has lived a life with dangerous briefs. For securing US sponsorship of the NRO, every one has wondered: “what is the quid pro quo that the USA wants from Asif Zardari?” It appears that Asif Zardari signed up to disintegration of Pakistan. He has been tasked to destroy the two institutions that hold Pakistan together: 1) the armed forces and 2) the Punjab.
The Memo written by Pakistan’s Ambassador Hussain Haqqani at the behest of President Zardari to the US Government revealed how AZ intended to undermine the command structure of the armed forces on the pretext of ‘civilian control’. Now he has launched a scheme for the division of the Punjab only weeks before the installation of a ‘care-taker administration’. The constitutional amendment proposed by his press secretary – Senator Farhatullah Babar is unlikely to be passed but it indicates the array of forces being assembled to secure the nefarious ends.
In not understanding the nature of enemy schemes and being so inadequate in articulating viable popular opposition the PML(N) and TIP share equal blame. India has for decades funded opposition to Kalabagh Dam and promoting Seraiki province. Disintegration of Pakistan has been at the top of Indian agenda since 1947. There should have been no doubt left after the invasion and separation of East Pakistan in 1971.
But the very same political parties that are in the ruling coalition today were at the helm in West Pakistan in 1971. Their leaders readily embraced the Indian propaganda that East Pakistan separated because of ‘maltreatment’ by the Punjabis. Ever since, the Punjab has been the favourite whipping boy – blamed for every real or imagined grievance. But the leaders of Punjab have never flinched from making a sacrifice in any inter-provincial deal – the recent finance award as well as the Water Accord of 19991. But the Indian propaganda continues to be mouthed by President Zardari and his coalition partners.
Not content with the Punjab giving in to every demand of cut in its legitimate share, the Zardari Administration is now embarked on Sheikh Mujib style campaign of subversion supplemented by direct attacks on the military and the integrity of the Punjab province.
The 2008 announcement of cancellation of the Kalabagh Dam, the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, and now the Freudian Slip, attempt to separate the BJP (Bahawalpur Janubi Punjab) from the Punjab, are all a part of the same plan.
Mian Nawaz Sharif does not appear to understand how diabolical the scheme is. His party came up with a proposal to carve out three provinces instead of two. PML(N) get no votes – just ridicule and disgust. The people and politicians of Sindh have been wiser in understanding that the real reason for the new Local Bodies Ordinance is to give Indian protégés – the MQM – perpetual control over not just Karachi but all the urban centres of Sindh. Are the Punjabis so dim that they cannot understand the real intent behind the proposed division of the Punjab?
In Pakistan, land has always belonged to the provinces but river water is owned by the federation. This is a sensible division that has stood the test of time. Large reservoirs of water in dams have been built and operated by the federal government but the barrages and the canals have been owned and operated by the provincial governments. Kalabagh Dam is an exception because it is a dam as well as a barrage. Its right bank canal would irrigate DIK area of South KPK, and the left Bank canal would irrigate the area between Rivers Indus and Jhelum. The reservoir would serve the interest of South Punjab and Sindh Province as Sindh gets 37% of the water of any reservoir built on River Indus. Tarbela Dam, built in the KPK has increased supply of irrigation water at Sukhar as well Kotri barrages. Kalabagh Dam would be even more beneficial to Sindh because it would conserve huge amount of extra water from all the tributaries of River Indus down stream of Tarbela and hill torrents that have caused death and destruction in South Punjab.
Kalabagh Dam is so detested by India because it would link all the provinces of Pakistan into a nationwide irrigation system.
Farhatullah Babar included the Districts of Mianwali and Bhakkar in BJP in his proposal. The people of the two districts understood his intent and protested. Thy understood that it would imply that the only dam in the Punjab – the Kalabagh Dam – would be located outside the province.
Farhatullah Babar proposal undermines the link canals and the entire irrigation system of the Punjab but the real reason is more sinister. The BJP locked into disputes with Punjab in perpetuity would be sight for sore hostile eyes. The fiendish scheme has escaped the attention of Imran Khan and Nawaz Sharif but that may not be ignored by the farmers and irrigation experts. However, India and its protégés in Pakistan have good reasons for hope; if the benefits of Kalabagh Dam to Sindh can be sold as damaging because the Dam would also benefit the Punjab, why the damage to Multan and Bahawalpur be sold as beneficial merely because the rest of the Punjab disapproves of the division of the Punjab.
The reason why the Indo-Zionist lobby wants the division of the Punjab is the one given by Anatol Lieven:
“If Pakistan is to be broken as a state, it will be on the streets of Lahore and other great Punjabi cities, not in the Pashtun mountains.”
East Pakistan was the largest province of Pakistan until 1971 but its people were not able to see the benefits in the union. It split from Pakistan and is forever reduced to the status of a vassal state of India.
The Punjabis are 60% of the Pakistani nation now. As noted by Anatol Lieven, they see the vital need for maintaining the union and the Army is willing and able to defend every part of Pakistan.
The only way Pakistan may not succeed in maintaining the integrity of the federation is that the political process brings a Boris Yeltsin to power and the armed forces are too discredited or demonised to resists threats to national integrity.
Pakistan has had a Boris Yeltsin in the shape of Asif Zardari in power for five years but the military has maintained national cohesion despite him.
“The U.S. strategy toward Pakistan has been focused on trying to get Islamabad to give serious help to Washington’s campaign against the Afghan Taliban. There are two rather large problems with this approach. The first is that it is never going to happen because Pakistani strategic calculations and the feelings of the country’s population make it impossible…. except in return for U.S. help against India—which Washington also cannot deliver.
“The second problem is that it gets America’s real priorities in the region back to front. The war in Afghanistan is a temporary U.S. interest, in which the chief concern is not the reality of victory or defeat as such (if only because neither can be clearly defined) but preserving some appearance of success in order to avoid the damage to American military prestige that would result from obvious failure. By contrast, preserving the Pakistani state and containing the terrorist threat to the West from Pakistan is a permanent vital interest not only of the U.S. military and political establishments but of every American citizen.
“While the prospects for any real success in Afghanistan look gloomy, but if saving Pakistan is the real priority, then things do not look so desperate. This is because while getting large numbers of Pakistanis to help America is virtually impossible, getting enough Pakistanis to preserve their existing state is much easier. To a great extent, this is for negative reasons: the elites and indeed the masses have an acute sense of the horror from the country’s collapse. However, a degree of positive loyalty is also present in one key institution and in one key province: namely the military and the Punjab. If Pakistan is to be broken as a state, it will be on the streets of Lahore and other great Punjabi cities, not in the Pashtun mountains.”
Unlike US think tanks and most American writers, who subjectively project Indo-Zionist interests in the region, Anatol Lieven is British, and objective. His article was published nearly two years ago in ‘National Interest’ of March-April 2011, A lot has changed since; Britain has assumed a central role in resolving the Afghan imbroglio and it is the view of Anal Lieven that appears to have prevailed. Disintegration of Pakistan is still on the agenda but it is hoped it will follow rather than precede heightened Civil War in Afghanistan that is likely to result from NATO/US withdrawal.
Pakistan has been ruled by a four party coalition for five years – Zardari League, MQM, ANP and JUI(F) – all of who have a history of opposition to Pakistan. President Asif Ali Zardari is the head of the PPP although his spoilt son – Bilawal – is formally the chairman of the Party. The father of Asif Zardari – Hakim Ali – was the President of ANP in Sindh after he was expelled from the PPP allegedly for trying to blackmail late Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (ZAB). No one has revealed why was ZAB being blackmailed but it is well known that he was so angry with Hakim Ali that he sold all his assets and moved to the UK only to return after the execution of ZAB.
The relationship Asif Zardari with his wife Benazir was characterized by the Hollywood film ‘sleeping with the enemy’. But my point here is not their marital relationship; my point is that Asif Zardari has strong nerves; he has lived a life with dangerous briefs. For securing US sponsorship of the NRO, every one has wondered: “what is the quid pro quo that the USA wants from Asif Zardari?” It appears that Asif Zardari signed up to disintegration of Pakistan. He has been tasked to destroy the two institutions that hold Pakistan together: 1) the armed forces and 2) the Punjab.
The Memo written by Pakistan’s Ambassador Hussain Haqqani at the behest of President Zardari to the US Government revealed how AZ intended to undermine the command structure of the armed forces on the pretext of ‘civilian control’. Now he has launched a scheme for the division of the Punjab only weeks before the installation of a ‘care-taker administration’. The constitutional amendment proposed by his press secretary – Senator Farhatullah Babar is unlikely to be passed but it indicates the array of forces being assembled to secure the nefarious ends.
In not understanding the nature of enemy schemes and being so inadequate in articulating viable popular opposition the PML(N) and TIP share equal blame. India has for decades funded opposition to Kalabagh Dam and promoting Seraiki province. Disintegration of Pakistan has been at the top of Indian agenda since 1947. There should have been no doubt left after the invasion and separation of East Pakistan in 1971.
But the very same political parties that are in the ruling coalition today were at the helm in West Pakistan in 1971. Their leaders readily embraced the Indian propaganda that East Pakistan separated because of ‘maltreatment’ by the Punjabis. Ever since, the Punjab has been the favourite whipping boy – blamed for every real or imagined grievance. But the leaders of Punjab have never flinched from making a sacrifice in any inter-provincial deal – the recent finance award as well as the Water Accord of 19991. But the Indian propaganda continues to be mouthed by President Zardari and his coalition partners.
Not content with the Punjab giving in to every demand of cut in its legitimate share, the Zardari Administration is now embarked on Sheikh Mujib style campaign of subversion supplemented by direct attacks on the military and the integrity of the Punjab province.
The 2008 announcement of cancellation of the Kalabagh Dam, the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, and now the Freudian Slip, attempt to separate the BJP (Bahawalpur Janubi Punjab) from the Punjab, are all a part of the same plan.
Mian Nawaz Sharif does not appear to understand how diabolical the scheme is. His party came up with a proposal to carve out three provinces instead of two. PML(N) get no votes – just ridicule and disgust. The people and politicians of Sindh have been wiser in understanding that the real reason for the new Local Bodies Ordinance is to give Indian protégés – the MQM – perpetual control over not just Karachi but all the urban centres of Sindh. Are the Punjabis so dim that they cannot understand the real intent behind the proposed division of the Punjab?
In Pakistan, land has always belonged to the provinces but river water is owned by the federation. This is a sensible division that has stood the test of time. Large reservoirs of water in dams have been built and operated by the federal government but the barrages and the canals have been owned and operated by the provincial governments. Kalabagh Dam is an exception because it is a dam as well as a barrage. Its right bank canal would irrigate DIK area of South KPK, and the left Bank canal would irrigate the area between Rivers Indus and Jhelum. The reservoir would serve the interest of South Punjab and Sindh Province as Sindh gets 37% of the water of any reservoir built on River Indus. Tarbela Dam, built in the KPK has increased supply of irrigation water at Sukhar as well Kotri barrages. Kalabagh Dam would be even more beneficial to Sindh because it would conserve huge amount of extra water from all the tributaries of River Indus down stream of Tarbela and hill torrents that have caused death and destruction in South Punjab.
Kalabagh Dam is so detested by India because it would link all the provinces of Pakistan into a nationwide irrigation system.
Farhatullah Babar included the Districts of Mianwali and Bhakkar in BJP in his proposal. The people of the two districts understood his intent and protested. Thy understood that it would imply that the only dam in the Punjab – the Kalabagh Dam – would be located outside the province.
Farhatullah Babar proposal undermines the link canals and the entire irrigation system of the Punjab but the real reason is more sinister. The BJP locked into disputes with Punjab in perpetuity would be sight for sore hostile eyes. The fiendish scheme has escaped the attention of Imran Khan and Nawaz Sharif but that may not be ignored by the farmers and irrigation experts. However, India and its protégés in Pakistan have good reasons for hope; if the benefits of Kalabagh Dam to Sindh can be sold as damaging because the Dam would also benefit the Punjab, why the damage to Multan and Bahawalpur be sold as beneficial merely because the rest of the Punjab disapproves of the division of the Punjab.
The reason why the Indo-Zionist lobby wants the division of the Punjab is the one given by Anatol Lieven:
“If Pakistan is to be broken as a state, it will be on the streets of Lahore and other great Punjabi cities, not in the Pashtun mountains.”
East Pakistan was the largest province of Pakistan until 1971 but its people were not able to see the benefits in the union. It split from Pakistan and is forever reduced to the status of a vassal state of India.
The Punjabis are 60% of the Pakistani nation now. As noted by Anatol Lieven, they see the vital need for maintaining the union and the Army is willing and able to defend every part of Pakistan.
The only way Pakistan may not succeed in maintaining the integrity of the federation is that the political process brings a Boris Yeltsin to power and the armed forces are too discredited or demonised to resists threats to national integrity.
Pakistan has had a Boris Yeltsin in the shape of Asif Zardari in power for five years but the military has maintained national cohesion despite him.
But that would not last forever. Our enemies hope that Mian Nawaz Sharif would play the role of blunderbuss Boris even better. Pakistan is not out of the woods yet. ++
Washington’s intent goes beyond the narrow objective of “regime change”. The thrust of US foreign policy consists in weakening the central government and fracturing the country.
The ongoing US drone attacks under the banner of the “Global War on Terrorism” are part of that process.
This article first published five years ago in December 2007 focuses on the historical process of collapse of Pakistan as a nation state following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
Washington has been planning a scenario of disintegration and civil war in Pakistan for more than five years. According to a 2005 report by the US National Intelligence Council and the CIA, Pakistan is slated to become a “failed state” by 2015, “as it would be affected by civil war, complete Talibanisation and struggle for control of its nuclear weapons”.
Since the outset of the Soviet Afghan war, US intelligence using Pakistan’s ISI as a go-between has supported Al Qaeda and its various affiliated organizations.
“Talibanisation” is the direct result of US-led covert operations.
What is not mentioned in the NIC-CIA report is that the destabilization process– including covert support of terrorists groups as well the ongoing drone attacks– is part of a longstanding US led intelligence operation.
The US course consists in fomenting social, ethnic and factional divisions and political fragmentation, including the territorial breakup of Pakistan. This course of action is also dictated by US war plans in relation to both Afghanistan and Iran.
Michel Chossudovsky, December 27, 2012
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Global Research, 30 December 2007
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto has created conditions which contribute to the ongoing destabilization and fragmentation of Pakistan as a Nation.
The process of US sponsored “regime change”, which normally consists in the re-formation of a fresh proxy government under new leaders has been broken. Discredited in the eyes of Pakistani public opinion, General Pervez Musharaf cannot remain in the seat of political power. But at the same time, the fake elections supported by the “international community” scheduled for January 2008, even if they were to be carried out, would not be accepted as legitimate, thereby creating a political impasse.
There are indications that the assassination of Benazir Bhutto was anticipated by US officials:
“It has been known for months that the Bush-Cheney administration and its allies have been maneuvering to strengthen their political control of Pakistan, paving the way for the expansion and deepening of the “war on terrorism” across the region.
Various American destabilization plans, known for months by officials and analysts, proposed the toppling of Pakistan’s military…
The assassination of Bhutto appears to have been anticipated. There were even reports of “chatter” among US officials about the possible assassinations of either Pervez Musharraf or Benazir Bhutto, well before the actual attempts took place. (Larry Chin, Global Research, 29 December 2007)
Political Impasse
“Regime change” with a view to ensuring continuity under military rule is no longer the main thrust of US foreign policy. The regime of Pervez Musharraf cannot prevail. Washington’s foreign policy course is to actively promote the political fragmentation and balkanization of Pakistan as a nation.
A new political leadership is anticipated but in all likelihood it will take on a very different shape, in relation to previous US sponsored regimes. One can expect that Washington will push for a compliant political leadership, with no commitment to the national interest, a leadership which will serve US imperial interests, while concurrently contributing under the disguise of “decentralization”, to the weakening of the central government and the fracture of Pakistan’s fragile federal structure.
The political impasse is deliberate. It is part of an evolving US foreign policy agenda, which favors disruption and disarray in the structures of the Pakistani State. Indirect rule by the Pakistani military and intelligence apparatus is to be replaced by more direct forms of US interference, including an expanded US military presence inside Pakistan.
This expanded military presence is also dictated by the Middle East-Central Asia geopolitical situation and Washington’s ongoing plans to extend the Middle East war to a much broader area.
The US has several military bases in Pakistan. It controls the country’s air space. According to a recent report: “U.S. Special Forces are expected to vastly expand their presence in Pakistan, as part of an effort to train and support indigenous counter-insurgency forces and clandestine counterterrorism units” (William Arkin, Washington Post, December 2007).
The official justification and pretext for an increased military presence in Pakistan is to extend the “war on terrorism”. Concurrently, to justify its counterrorism program, Washington is also beefing up its covert support to the “terrorists.”
The Balkanization of Pakistan
Already in 2005, a report by the US National Intelligence Council and the CIA forecast a “Yugoslav-like fate” for Pakistan “in a decade with the country riven by civil war, bloodshed and inter-provincial rivalries, as seen recently in Balochistan.” (Energy Compass, 2 March 2005). According to the NIC-CIA, Pakistan is slated to become a “failed state” by 2015, “as it would be affected by civil war, complete Talibanisation and struggle for control of its nuclear weapons”. (Quoted by former Pakistan High Commissioner to UK, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Times of India, 13 February 2005):
“Nascent democratic reforms will produce little change in the face of opposition from an entrenched political elite and radical Islamic parties. In a climate of continuing domestic turmoil, the Central government’s control probably will be reduced to the Punjabi heartland and the economic hub of Karachi,” the former diplomat quoted the NIC-CIA report as saying.
Expressing apprehension, Hasan asked, “are our military rulers working on a similar agenda or something that has been laid out for them in the various assessment reports over the years by the National Intelligence Council in joint collaboration with CIA?” (Ibid)
Continuity, characterized by the dominant role of the Pakistani military and intelligence has been scrapped in favor of political breakup and balkanization.
According to the NIC-CIA scenario, which Washington intends to carry out: “Pakistan will not recover easily from decades of political and economic mismanagement, divisive policies, lawlessness, corruption and ethnic friction,” (Ibid) .
The US course consists in fomenting social, ethnic and factional divisions and political fragmentation, including the territorial breakup of Pakistan. This course of action is also dictated by US war plans in relation to both Afghanistan and Iran.
This US agenda for Pakistan is similar to that applied throughout the broader Middle East Central Asian region. US strategy, supported by covert intelligence operations, consists in triggering ethnic and religious strife, abetting and financing secessionist movements while also weakening the institutions of the central government.
The broader objective is to fracture the Nation State and redraw the borders of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Pakistan’s Oil and Gas reserves
Pakistan’s extensive oil and gas reserves, largely located in Balochistan province, as well as its pipeline corridors are considered strategic by the Anglo-American alliance, requiring the concurrent militarization of Pakistani territory.
Balochistan comprises more than 40 percent of Pakistan’s land mass, possesses important reserves of oil and natural gas as well as extensive mineral resources.
The Iran-India pipeline corridor is slated to transit through Balochistan. Balochistan also possesses a deap sea port largely financed by China located at Gwadar, on the Arabian Sea, not far from the Straits of Hormuz where 30 % of the world’s daily oil supply moves by ship or pipeline. (Asia News.it, 29 December 2007)
Pakistan has an estimated 25.1 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of proven gas reserves of which 19 trillion are located in Balochistan. Among foreign oil and gas contractors in Balochistan are BP, Italy’s ENI, Austria’s OMV, and Australia’s BHP. It is worth noting that Pakistan’s State oil and gas companies, including PPL which has the largest stake in the Sui oil fields of Balochistan are up for privatization under IMF-World Bank supervision.
According to the Oil and Gas Journal (OGJ), Pakistan had proven oil reserves of 300 million barrels, most of which are located in Balochistan. Other estimates place Balochistan oil reserves at an estimated six trillion barrels of oil reserves both on-shore and off-shore (Environment News Service, 27 October 2006) .
Covert Support to Balochistan Separatists
Balochistan’s strategic energy reserves have a bearing on the separatist agenda. Following a familiar pattern, there are indications that the Baloch insurgency is being supported and abetted by Britain and the US.
The Baloch national resistance movement dates back to the late 1940s, when Balochistan was invaded by Pakistan. In the current geopolitical context, the separatist movement is in the process of being hijacked by foreign powers.
British intelligence is allegedly providing covert support to Balochistan separatists (which from the outset have been repressed by Pakistan’s military). In June 2006, Pakistan’s Senate Committee on Defence accused British intelligence of “abetting the insurgency in the province bordering Iran” [Balochistan]..(Press Trust of India, 9 August 2006). Ten British MPs were involved in a closed door session of the Senate Committee on Defence regarding the alleged support of Britain’s Secret Service to Baloch separatists (Ibid). Also of relevance are reports of CIA and Mossad support to Baloch rebels in Iran and Southern Afghanistan.
It would appear that Britain and the US are supporting both sides. The US is providing American F-16 jets to the Pakistani military, which are being used to bomb Baloch villages in Balochistan. Meanwhile, British alleged covert support to the separatist movement (according to the Pakistani Senate Committee) contributes to weakening the central government.
The stated purpose of US counter-terrorism is to provide covert support as well as as training to “Liberation Armies” ultimately with a view to destabilizing sovereign governments. In Kosovo, the training of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in the 1990s had been entrusted to a private mercenary company, Military Professional Resources Inc (MPRI), on contract to the Pentagon.
The BLA bears a canny resemblance to Kosovo’s KLA, which was financed by the drug trade and supported by the CIA and Germany’s Bundes Nachrichten Dienst (BND).
The BLA emerged shortly after the 1999 military coup. It has no tangible links to the Baloch resistance movement, which developed since the late 1940s. An aura of mystery surrounds the leadership of the BLA.
Baloch population in Pink: In Iran, Pakistan and Southern Afghanistan
Washington favors the creation of a “Greater Balochistan” which would integrate the Baloch areas of Pakistan with those of Iran and possibly the Southern tip of Afghanistan (See Map above), thereby leading to a process of political fracturing in both Iran and Pakistan.
“The US is using Balochi nationalism for staging an insurgency inside Iran’s Sistan-Balochistan province. The ‘war on terror’ in Afghanistan gives a useful political backdrop for the ascendancy of Balochi militancy” (See Global Research, 6 March 2007).
Military scholar Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters writing in the June 2006 issue of The Armed Forces Journal, suggests, in no uncertain terms that Pakistan should be broken up, leading to the formation of a separate country: “Greater Balochistan” or “Free Balochistan” (see Map below). The latter would incorporate the Pakistani and Iranian Baloch provinces into a single political entity.
In turn, according to Peters, Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP) should be incorporated into Afghanistan “because of its linguistic and ethnic affinity”. This proposed fragmentation, which broadly reflects US foreign policy, would reduce Pakistani territory to approximately 50 percent of its present land area. (See map). Pakistan would also loose a large part of its coastline on the Arabian Sea.
Although the map does not officially reflect Pentagon doctrine, it has been used in a training program at NATO’s Defense College for senior military officers. This map, as well as other similar maps, have most probably been used at the National War Academy as well as in military planning circles. (See Mahdi D. Nazemroaya, Global Research, 18 November 2006)
“Lieutenant-Colonel Peters was last posted, before he retired to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, within the U.S. Defence Department, and has been one of the Pentagon’s foremost authors with numerous essays on strategy for military journals and U.S. foreign policy.” (Ibid)
It is worth noting that secessionist tendencies are not limited to Balochistan. There are separatist groups in Sindh province, which are largely based on opposition to the Punjabi-dominated military regime of General Pervez Musharraf (For Further details see Selig Harrisson, Le Monde diplomatique, October 2006)
“Strong Economic Medicine”: Weakening Pakistan’s Central Government
Pakistan has a federal structure based on federal provincial transfers. Under a federal fiscal structure, the central government transfers financial resources to the provinces, with a view to supporting provincial based programs. When these transfers are frozen as occurred in Yugoslavia in January 1990, on orders of the IMF, the federal fiscal structure collapses:
“State revenues that should have gone as transfer payments to the republics [of the Yugoslav federation] went instead to service Belgrade’s debt … . The republics were largely left to their own devices. … The budget cuts requiring the redirection of federal revenues towards debt servicing, were conducive to the suspension of transfer payments by Belgrade to the governments of the Republics and Autonomous Provinces.
In one fell swoop, the reformers had engineered the final collapse of Yugoslavia’s federal fiscal structure and mortally wounded its federal political institutions. By cutting the financial arteries between Belgrade and the republics, the reforms fueled secessionist tendencies that fed on economic factors as well as ethnic divisions, virtually ensuring the de facto secession of the republics. (Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, Second Edition, Global Research, Montreal, 2003, Chapter 17.)
It is by no means accidental that the 2005 National Intelligence Council- CIA report had predicted a “Yugoslav-like fate” for Pakistan pointing to the impacts of “economic mismanagement” as one of the causes of political break-up and balkanization.
“Economic mismanagement” is a term used by the Washington based international financial institutions to describe the chaos which results from not fully abiding by the IMF’s Structural Adjustment Program. In actual fact, the “economic mismanagement” and chaos is the outcome of IMF-World Bank prescriptions, which invariably trigger hyperinflation and precipitate indebted countries into extreme poverty.
Pakistan has been subjected to the same deadly IMF “economic medicine” as Yugoslavia: In 1999, in the immediate wake of the coup d’Etat which brought General Pervez Musharaf to the helm of the military government, an IMF economic package, which included currency devaluation and drastic austerity measures, was imposed on Pakistan. Pakistan’s external debt is of the order of US$40 billion. The IMF’s “debt reduction” under the package was conditional upon the sell-off to foreign capital of the most profitable State owned enterprises (including the oil and gas facilities in Balochistan) at rockbottom prices .
Musharaf’s Finance Minister was chosen by Wall Street, which is not an unusual practice. The military rulers appointed at Wall Street’s behest, a vice-president of Citigroup, Shaukat Aziz, who at the time was head of CitiGroup’s Global Private Banking. (See WSWS.org, 30 October 1999). CitiGroup is among the largest commercial foreign banking institutions in Pakistan.
There are obvious similarities in the nature of US covert intelligence operations applied in country after country in different parts of the so-called “developing World”. These covert operation, including the organisation of military coups, are often synchronized with the imposition of IMF-World Bank macro-economic reforms. In this regard, Yugoslavia’s federal fiscal structure collapsed in 1990 leading to mass poverty and heightened ethnic and social divisions. The US and NATO sponsored “civil war” launched in mid-1991 consisted in coveting Islamic groups as well as channeling covert support to separatist paramilitary armies in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia.
A similar “civil war” scenario has been envisaged for Pakistan by the National Intelligence Council and the CIA: From the point of view of US intelligence, which has a longstanding experience in abetting separatist “liberation armies”, “Greater Albania” is to Kosovo what “Greater Balochistan” is to Pakistan’s Southeastern Balochistan province. Similarly, the KLA is Washington’s chosen model, to be replicated in Balochistan province.
The Assassination of Benazir Bhutto
Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in Rawalpindi, no ordinary city. Rawalpindi is a military city host to the headquarters of the Pakistani Armed Forces and Military Intelligence (ISI). Ironically Bhutto was assassinated in an urban area tightly controlled and guarded by the military police and the country’s elite forces. Rawalpindi is swarming with ISI intelligence officials, which invariably infiltrate political rallies. Her assassination was not a haphazard event.
Without evidence, quoting Pakistan government sources, the Western media in chorus has highlighted the role of Al-Qaeda, while also focusing on the the possible involvement of the ISI.
What these interpretations do not mention is that the ISI continues to play a key role in overseeing Al Qaeda on behalf of US intelligence. The press reports fail to mention two important and well documented facts:
1) the ISI maintains close ties to the CIA. The ISI is virtually an appendage of the CIA.
2) Al Qaeda is a creation of the CIA. The ISI provides covert support to Al Qaeda, acting on behalf of US intelligence.
The alleged involvement of either Al Qaeda and/or the ISI would suggest that US intelligence was cognizant and/or implicated in the assassination plot.
[Part Two: Pakistan and the “Global War on Terrorism” at
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7746]
Michel Chossudovsky is the author of the international bestseller America’s “War on Terrorism” Global Research, 2005. He is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Center for Research on Globalization.
– See more at: http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-destabilization-of-pakistan/7705#sthash.0pEuRMZC.dpuf
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