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Archive for December, 2016

Bhutto and the Polish Resolution By Col. Riaz Jafri (Retd)

Posted by admin in CURRENT EVENTS on December 11th, 2016

Bhutto and the Polish Resolution

By

 

 Col. S. Riaz Jafri (Retd)

 

Many may have seen Pakistani TV channels occasionally showing Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was representing Pakistan as its nominated Foreign Minister, tearing and throwing away some papers in rage and walking out of the UN Security Council.

 

 

 

 

                                                                               

 

              

ZAB tearing the Polish Resolution  and Walking out of the UNSC Session

 

 

Well … well … the papers were the Polish Resolution and it was 15th of  December 1971 when the 71 war between India and Pakistan was in its most crucial stage and for Pakistan, every day – nay – every moment mattered incalculably.  

Events leading to the Polish Resolution were that after months of shelling at East Pakistan borders, sending infiltrators and assisting the Bengali Mukti Bahini, Indian armed forces crossed the international borders in the Eastern Sector on Eid ul Fitr day –  the 22 November 1971.  On 3rd December armed hostilities broke out on the Western Front also. As full-fledged India and Pakistan War started the matter came before the UN Security Council. 

On 4 December 1971 Pakistan’s representative Agha Shahi argued that Pakistan’s internal crisis was outside the ambit of the Security Council who could deal only with international peace and not the internal peace of a member state.

The Soviet delegate held Pakistan Military responsible for the situation and proposed that the so-called Bangladesh government, formed in exile on Indian territory, be also given a hearing in the Council, which was vetoed by China.

A deadlock resulted in the Security Council when the Soviets too vetoed resolutions moved by the United States and China calling for “immediate cessation of hostilities and withdrawal of troops from each other’s territory”

 In the meantime, the situation in East Pakistan had become very critical. But most surprisingly while the matter of life and death for Pakistan was being discussed and negotiated by the world powers at the UN, Bhutto who had arrived there on 11th Dec 1971 stayed away for full three days from the UNSC debates resting in his Waldorf-Astoria hotel suite ‘indisposed’ due to common cold!

On 15 December 1971, Poland sponsored a draft resolution that had the Soviet support.  It provided for the release of Sheikh Mujib-ur-Rehman and transfer of power to the elected representatives under his leadership in East Pakistan, cessation of military actions in all the areas, initial and then permanent ceasefire, withdrawal of the Pakistan armed forces to the preset locations in the eastern theatre, evacuation of Pakistani nationals and armed forces from there and the withdrawal of the Indian armed forces from the eastern theatre in consultation with the newly established authority.

Since for all practical purposes, Pakistan’s acceptance of the Polish Resolution would have meant that it had agreed to the secession of East Pakistan, Bhutto declined to take upon himself the responsibility of conceding defeat there and walked out of the Security Council.

A little closer look at the Polish Resolution would, however, show that it favored Pakistan to quite some extent.  Though the acceptance of the Polish Resolution would not have prevented the dismemberment of Pakistan, which in any case was a matter of forgone conclusion yet,  its implementation would have averted the sad and stigmatic episode of Pakistan armed forces’ surrender in East Pakistan and becoming Prisoners of War. It provided for:

1.        A Cease-Fire and immediate mutual withdrawal before the capture of Dacca.

2.        This would have deprived India of the clear victory it sought.

3.        A quick return of the Pakistan Army under UN arrangements would have greatly complicated India’s capacity to assist the Awami league in establishing a stable and moderate regime in East Pakistan.

4.        As once both Indian & Pakistani forces returned by virtue of the resolution the conglomeration of Mukti-Bahini forces would have commenced their ‘own civil war for power’, in the race to control the new country.

5.        This was a no-win situation for India as that would have forced India to restore the strategic points on the Pakistani side of cease-fire line in Kashmir, that the Indians had seized at some cost in the 1971 war.

6.        To add further to above, Indra Gandhi knew that behind the Polish Resolution, really stood the Soviets, and in principle, New Dehli had reluctantly conceded that it had no options but to accept the resolution that had been approved unanimously.

However, ZAB in  his quite lengthy and forceful speech and probably driven by his some hidden inner desire stalked out of Assembly saying, “Finally, I am not a rat. I have never ratted in my life. I have faced assassination attempts, I have faced imprisonments. I have always confronted crises. Today I am not ratting, but I am leaving your Security Council. I find it disgraceful to my person and to my country to remain here a moment longer than is necessary. I am not boycotting. Impose any decision, have a treaty worse than the Treaty of Versailles, legalize aggression, legalize occupation, legalize everything that has been illegal up to 15 December 1971. I will not be a party to it. We will fight; we will go back and fight. My country beckons me. Why should I waste my time here in the Security Council? I will not be a party to the ignominious surrender of a part of my country. You can take your Security Council. Here you are. (Ripping papers) I am going.”

 

Next day the 16 December 1971 East Pakistan was lost forever.

 

 Reflecting on the wisdom of the hindsight of 45 years one is at times compelled to ponder over some of the insolvable quizzes, like :

·        Why did Bhutto evade the UNSC debates from 11 Dec till 14 Dec 1971 on the pretext of suffering from the common cold?   

·        Was he filibustering and gaining time to make the position of the Pak armed forces untenable and wanted them to surrender?  In this context  a page from  Mr.  Sultan Muhammad Khan’s book ‘Memories & Reflections’. pages-385-386, who was the foreign secretary in January 1970 and handled Pakistan’s foreign relations during the civil war in East Pakistan is quite revealing, He says, “The no less important apprehension that two or three army divisions with their formations and arms intact, returning to West Pakistan with a stigma of failure, would be a serious threat to the military and emerging political leadership. Questions would be raised by them to determine and assign responsibility for the political and military failure in East Pakistan. Things could take an unpredictable course and emergence of a new military leadership which would put an end to the prospect of the civil rule was a distinct possibility”. To conclude: Had the Army come back, as stated in the remarks above, Yahya & his team, as well ZAB would have been jointly tried by an Army commission, and their fates sealed, a coup was definitely expected”.

·        And then look at the Justice Hamood ur Rehman Commission appointed by him and the mandate given to it, “To inquire into and find out the circumstances in which the Commander Eastern command surrendered and the members of the Armed Forces of Pakistan under his command laid down their arms and a cease-fire was ordered along the borders of West Pakistan and India and along the cease-fire line in the State of Jammu and Kashmir.”   What could a commission entrusted with such a task (purely military in nature) do except find faults and blame the army for the debacle ?!

·        Why was the Commission not given the task, “To enquire into the circumstances which led to the cessation of East Pakistan from Pakistan”.  The outcome report would have been quite different.

·        And the million dollar question; “Would Mujib ur Rehman have proved to be a loyal and patriotic PM had Bhutto agreed to his becoming the PM of united Pakistan as was announced by President  Yahya Khan?

 

I leave these afterthoughts for the readers to decide for themselves.

 

Col. Riaz Jafri (Retd)
30 Westridge 1
Rawalpindi 46000
Pakistan
E.mail: [email protected]

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Nawaz Sharif is a Clear and Present Danger to Pakistan.

Posted by JANJUA in CURRENT EVENTS on December 8th, 2016

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 Nawaz Sharif is a Clear and Present Danger to Pakistan.

His partner in crime is Asif Zardari, this is the dynamic devilish duo which is out to reduce Pakistan as a vassal of India, in consonance with the wishes of their sponsor and power base, the only Global Super Power and its Agencies. The first step by Nawaz Sharif is the release of Indian Spy Gulbhushan Yadav,it will happen overnight, an Indian Airforce plane will land in Lahore(its security will be provided by the Punjab Police); a police commando team will whisk Gulbhushan Yadav to the waiting IAF plane. Next morning, the release of Gul Bhushan Yadav will be announced on GEO Television, as a gesture of goodwill from Pakistan to Indian, as part of CBMs.confidence Building Measures. End of the Story.

Pakistan Think Tank members have alerted us that an act of sabotage is possible and/or imminent by RAW and its mastermind Ajit Doval on CPEC and its port facility at Gwadar. ISI should be alert that NDS, RAW, and Western Intelligencies are recruiting agents in S.Punjab,Balochistan,Sindh,Afghanistan, and Eastern Iran, to commit to acts of sabotage on CPEC. Several million dollars have been allocated by India, UAE,Iran,US,UK, & EU countries to destroy CPEC,which is considered to boost the economic power of China. This is considered as a Clear and Present Danger to the Economies of US,EU, and India. This will be the first time in the history of mankind that China and Russia will have access to the warm waters and deep harbor of Gwadar,located at the mouth of the Persian Gulf.

 

We will post such inside stories sent to Pakistan Think Tank Organization-UQAAB from reliable and trustworthy sources from patriotic Pakistanis and Expatriate Pakistanis. These stories will tell the inner secrets of Nawaz sharif’s subversive activities on behest of his foreign masters. In the 1970s, we tried to warn the nation through letters and articles about massive attempts to split East Pakistan,but no one listened.The outcome of the subversion of foreign nation’s was successful.India in collusion with US and UK intelligence, while ostensibly supporting United Pakistan, subversively worked with India to promote secession. Pakistani Expatriates from around the globe send us reliable stories which we double and triple check from our own sources in Islamabad. Pakistan is under a vicious attack from within and globally from Afghanistan, India, USA, UK, France,NATO Allies,S.Arabia and Iran.Only China is its trustworthy Ally.But, Chinese cannot support Pakistan defenses on social media.Having traveled and having connections in China, Pakistanis are alone in defending the Motherland. This attack has been orchestrated by Intelligence agencies of several countries,who have $Bn resources. & an ally in current PM Nawaz Sharif & Opposition led by PPP and the power behind it,Asif Zardari. Our sources in Pakistan tell us. that Pakistanis in Social Media should be eyes, ears,and speech of Pakistan’s Only Iron Wall Agency ISI.Pakistan army can defend external frontiers.However,it is spread too thin and needs help to defend the nation’s social frontiers in the Media and Internet.Pakistan’s free-wheeling TV channels and Press has already been surreptitiously bought by foreign intelligence agencies. Even the Media Czar of Pakistan, Absar Alam is possibly in the pay of foreign intelligence agencies,who work through Pakistanis, and who sell the motherland to fill their dollar accounts in Dubai Banks.

Only educated Pakistanis familiar with techniques of Western and Indian propaganda & their Social Media influences can prevent this disaster through their proactive efforts. Current propaganda organs in Pakistan are western sponsored TV channels and newspapers;among them, GEO and Express Tribune are in the forefront.

Example Propaganda Front Organization to Influence Hearts and Minds of Pakistanis:

https://www.devex.com/jobs/pakistan-media-coordinator-378345

 

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Mystery of Shahnawaz Bhutto Death:The True Story

Posted by Azahir in CURRENT EVENTS on December 7th, 2016

Paris was like a femme fatale. Ambassador Jamshed Marker loved being in the company of artists, writers, fashion designers and intellectuals. He counts conductor Zubin Mehta and actor Omar Sharif among his good friends. But one sad incident clearly stays in his memory of those bucolic days; the untimely death of Shahnawaz Bhutto. Marker sketches the details of the tragedy as though it happened yesterday. 

Begum Nusrat Bhutto lived in Cannes , in the French Riviera. The lodgings were loaned to her by the then French minister of justice. The minister was a good friend of the Bhuttos as was President Gaddafi of Libya . Gaddafi had given large sums of money to the Bhuttos. One evening during dinner in a restaurant, the two boys — Murtaza and Shahnawaz — entered into an argument over the division of the money. 

 

 

“Benazir tried to calm them down but she didn’t succeed,” remembers Marker. In the end, she took her mother and sister back to their home, while Murtaza followed Shahnawaz to his flat. The fight turned ugly. At some point, the French police came to arrest the inmates. By that time Shahnawaz was unconscious. He had taken an overdose of drugs. The police could not arrest Murtaza because he had a Syrian diplomatic passport. Later that night the younger brother passed away. The police arrested his Afghan wife for “not coming to the aid of a dying man.” She hired a lawyer but the case was quashed by the bereaved family when she threatened to spill the beans.

“The whole affair was so sordid; so grim; so grisly,” says Marker who was given all the details by the head of the French intelligence police. But General Naseerullah Babar, who was later Benazir’s interior minister, claims that General Zia had a hand in the murder. He had sent a death squad to eliminate the younger son. Babar says Shahnawaz was poisoned, I ask Marker: “No, that’s not true at all. Zia had nothing to do with it.”

Ambassador Marker, 88, sits in his airy study at his Bath Island home, surrounded by photos of world leaders he has met. It’s like an interview with history as he unfolds chapter after chapter of world events in which he was a player dexterously mapping Pakistan ’s course among the comity of nations. Did a supernatural power guide him? I ask. He smiles. “As a fighter in the navy, I encountered danger and death. It made me strong. Life is all about determination, diligence, and truth.”

He is busy writing another book where he will name names. Unlike Quiet Diplomacy, which is a brilliant memoir of the ambassador, the next one tentatively called Outlook, will focus on the social, developmental and political corrosion in Pakistan over the years. “Sycophancy is the single factor in our failure to progress,” he says. He remembers how one day he and his wife went to have lunch with Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan and Begum Raana. The host was missing. After a while, he came in seething with rage. “Normally Liaquat didn’t lose his cool. But that day he fumed,” says, Marker. “How dare these evacuee fellows present me with a number of properties saying that I can have them in lieu of my properties I have left behind in India ?” the prime minister told Marker. “I threw back the folder at them saying that they should never raise this subject again until they had provided shelter to each and every refugee living out in the open air all over Karachi .”

Marker says Liaquat Ali Khan was an honest man. “When he died he did not own a single house and had just Rs.4,000 in his bank account. Look at our leaders today… they are corrupt and surrounded by sycophants whose only job is flattery. It’s been the death of our value system. Few have the guts to speak the truth before the rulers.”

How come Marker is meant to be in the Guinness Book of Records as having been Ambassador to more countries than any other person if he was not a sycophant? “Well, I’m not sure if I’m in the Guinness Book, but all I can say is that I never jockeyed for a job. I really didn’t care and in fact each time the government changed I resigned.”

Though he was a non-career diplomat, Marker holds the record of serving as the ambassador of Pakistan continually for thirty years, in ten top capitals of the world. In each country, he left a mark. Embarrassed to talk about his own feats, Marker meanders through vignettes that add a touch of humour to them. “In Prime Minister Suhrawardy’s time, the joke of the day was that the society ladies were divided into two categories: PPM (pinched by the prime minister and UNPPM (un-pinched by the prime minister)! But he was another very honest man. His only weakness was women.

“Zulfi would say that the only way Suhrawardy can be arrested is for molesting women!” Marker was a good friend of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto who like Marker shared a love of cricket. “But when he became the PM, I stopped calling him Zulfi.” Marker remained a friend even when ZAB was out in the cold during the Ayub era. “I sent him a letter in the diplomatic bag. I’ve never told anyone but I even gave two lakh rupees to him when he formed the PPP. I could have lost my job, but I didn’t care!”

The rot according to Marker began with Ghulam Mohammad. The bureaucrats became very powerful and in collusion with Punjabi politicians like Gurmani and others ruined the system of governance. “People are like sheep led by wolves,” Marker quotes a friend. “ Pakistan after Liaquat has never been ruled by a genuinely elected leader,” says Marker. “Those who ruled were never true representatives of the people.”

He wanted to resign when Benazir Bhutto became the PM the second time. “She came to Washington on a state visit. In our private meetings where we discussed Pakistan ’s national interests, she always had her lobbyist Mark Segal and friend Peter Galbraith sit in. I was most unhappy about it. They had no business to be there.”

There are many more anecdotes that Marker shared with me. Hopefully, they will find a place in his new book. History is about people in power and how they ruled. Who better to write about Pakistan than this great man who served “two presidents, seven prime ministers, three chiefs of army staff and many foreign ministers.”

Marker quotes Moeen Qureshi who[sgmb id=”1″] was with Zia on the night Bhutto was hanged. “I stayed with Zia until 2am in the morning. Zia was cool as a cat as we talked about everything under the sun. The next morning I read that ZAB had been hanged!”

 

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Big Power Game By Fyodor Lukyanov

Posted by Dr. Salman in CURRENT EVENTS on December 2nd, 2016

Big 20 to Big Game: Power Politics Are Returning, Which Suits Russia

By

 

 Fyodor Lukyanov

State leaders take part in a group photo session for the G20 Summit held at the Hangzhou International Expo Center in Hangzhou in eastern China’s Zhejiang province, Sept. 4, 2016. Ng Han Guan / AP

The G20 meeting in China was a milestone in international relations. Until only recently, world leaders were certain that the global economy and increased connectivity had helped stabilize and define the new world order. Now, however, the pendulum has turned back towards a classic game between the great powers, and Russia is again feeling right in its element.

Two years ago, when arriving at the G20 summit in Brisbane, Australia, President Vladimir Putin was met at the airport by a low-level clerk from the local Foreign Affairs Ministry. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbot publicly promised to grab the Russian president by his lapels and throw him to the floor. While shaking Putin’s hand during a formal greeting, then-Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper told him to “Get out of Ukraine.” Commentators gloated over a photo of Putin sitting at an empty lunch table. In the end, the Putin cited urgent business back in Moscow and left the meeting before the official closing.

This year’s meeting in China’s Hangzhou has demonstrated that the key players have not forgotten about the Ukrainian crisis, but are concerned about other things. This time, the controversy concerned not Putin, but U.S. President Barack Obama, who was forced to disembark from the rear exit of Air Force One after the Chinese failed to provide a rolling staircase to the main door.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte called Obama a “son of a wh*re,” and then, after learning that the U.S. president had canceled their scheduled meeting, became frightened and began apologizing.

Putin was very much in demand. This was primarily due to the Middle East, where another turning point is approaching. But that is not the only reason. The global focus is shifting — not only geographically, but also in terms of content.

The Group of 20 was originally created as an economic forum, first at the ministerial level, as a response to the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, and later at the level of heads of state, in the middle of the global economic panic of 2008. The role of global “Politburo” went to the G8 — a venue that also began with an economic focus before switching to politics once Russia joined.

With the world changing so rapidly, it made little sense to discuss anything within the framework of a club in which Russia was the only non-Western power. At the very least, such discussions should include China, and preferably, a range of countries prepared to play a role in world affairs.

As a result, every year the agenda of the G20 becomes more politicized and economic issues take on an increasingly formal importance. Although China announced that the official theme of this year’s summit would be innovations and their role in economic growth, speakers addressed almost every subject but innovation — halts in oil production, the consequences of Brexit, the crisis in Aleppo and territorial conflicts connected with China.

This is perfectly natural. Since the start of the financial crisis in the late 2000s, the division between politics and the economy has vanished, with politics gaining the upper hand. That process began when governments started “nationalizing losses” by using taxpayer money to bail out private banking institutions. That changed the balance of power between corporations and governments in favor of the latter. The growing chaos in the Middle East and the related terrorist threat in Europe made security a priority, and the Ukrainian and Syrian crises have spawned a new rivalry between the major powers. What is most surprising is that China has become involved, despite previous careful avoidance.

The actual results of this G20 summit will become apparent later. Did Putin and Obama “reach an understanding of each other and the problem we face” in Syria, as the Russian president said? Are Moscow, Washington, Ankara and Riyadh making progress toward engineering a new Syria based on the de facto division of the spheres of influence there? Will Moscow and Tokyo compromise on territorial issues? Is China ready to switch from interdependence with the United States to political competition? How can all sides extricate themselves the Minsk process with minimal loss of face?

Now, 25 years after the curtain had seemingly fallen for the last time in the struggle between the world’s major powers, that drama has returned to center stage.

Fyodor Lukyanov is editor of Russia in Global Affairs

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Panamagate hearing: Third offshore company of Sharifs crops up by By Hasnaat Malik The Express Tribune,Pakistan: December 1st, 2016.

Posted by Fiona in CURRENT EVENTS on December 2nd, 2016

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Panamagate hearing: Third offshore company of Sharifs crops up

By Hasnaat Malik

Published: December 1, 2016

 

ISLAMABAD: Until now we knew that Premier Nawaz Sharif’s children owned two offshore companies — Nescol Ltd and Nielsen Enterprises Ltd — but now a third company, Coomber Group, has cropped up while the Sharif family is struggling to prove the money trail for the purchase of luxury flats in London.

In the documents submitted to the Supreme Court in the Panamagate case, the Sharif family has attached two different deeds where Maryam Safdar is a trustee of her brother’s companies.

London flats were bought through Qatari investments, Sharif family tells SC

On February 2, 2006, Premier Sharif’s daughter signed a declaration with her brother Hussain Nawaz as a trustee in his two companies Nescol and Nielsen. The same day, she signed a similar declaration with him for another company, Coomber Group, in which he owns 49% shares.

This third company is likely to be the focus of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s legal team in the next hearing scheduled for December 6.

After a two-week hiatus when a five-member bench of the apex court resumed hearing on Wednesday, the PTI legal team raised more than 10 questions to establish their case.

Agreeing to some of the arguments put forward by PTI’s lead counsel Naeem Bukhari, some judges observed that the Sharif family was ‘hiding’ facts about the ownership of the offshore companies as some necessary documents still seem to be missing in their replies.

The judges also raised questions on the money trail the Sharif family has so far submitted before the court and pointed out missing links. The missing details included banking transactions or any other channels through which money had been transferred from Dubai to Qatar and then to London to acquire the expensive property in an upscale neighborhood of London.

One of the judges also pointed out that there were two contradictory descriptions on the part of the Sharif family. One was narrated by the prime minister on the floor of parliament, claiming his family had set up a factory in Jeddah in 1999 using money from the Gulf Steel Mills it had established in Dubai, and later the Saudi factory had been sold to buy London properties.

Panama leaks case: PTI submits ‘evidence’ against Sharif family

Justice Ijaz ul Ahsan, agreeing with Bukhari’s contention, said that the other narrative came from the written replies the Sharif family has submitted before the court in which the Jeddah factory has no mention and the money trail has been directly established from selling the UAE factory to investments with the Qatari royal family.

An affidavit submitted on behalf of a Qatari prince claims that the London flats had been given in the ownership of Hussain Nawaz in 2006 as part of a business deal against investments made by his late grandfather with his family in the real estate business in the early 1980s.

To substantiate this account, the Sharif family had submitted another affidavit from Tariq Shafi, a cousin of Premier Nawaz who actually owned the business in Dubai in the 1970s. According to him, he was working on behalf of his uncle, the late father of Premier Nawaz. All shares in those businesses in Dubai were sold in 1980, generating 12 million UAE dirhams. The bench observed that Shafi’s signature on the affidavit did not match with the signature on the agreement.

Bukhari contended that despite having a liability of 14 million dirhams to Bank of Credit & Commerce International Dubai (BCCI), the Sharif family had invested 12 million dirhams in Qatar in 1980. He went on to state that there was not a single document produced by the Sharif family to establish how the money had been sent from Pakistan to Dubai, Qatar, Jeddah, and London.

Justice Asif Khosa observed that there was no banking trail of transfer of money from Dubai to London. He, however, asked the PTI counsel to establish that the Sharif family was the owner of these flats prior to 2006.

Nawaz family used offshore firms to own UK properties

“If you establish a connection with this property prior to 2006, then the burden of proof will be shifted to other side. Show us the connection as this is your entire case,” Justice Khosa observed. However, he said Premier Nawaz in his speeches talked about the trail of the money as he may forget.

Justice Azmat Saeed Sheikh, who has expertise in white-collar crimes, raised several questions about the money trail of the Sharif family’s London flats. No explanation has been given about how the family had cleared liability to the BCCI. He also observed that there was no explanation from the Sharif family that how had they gotten the money to set up Jeddah Steel Mills.

He was also surprised how the respondents had hidden the name of the owner of the Minerva Officer Limited, which was a shareholder of Nielsen and Nescol in 1994.

“No supportive document has been submitted to establish the ownership of Minerva. Why this information is being hidden from the bench,” Justice Azmat remarked. The judge also observed that the bench was conducting the inquisitorial proceedings in this matter.

Earlier, Bukhari pointed out that Premier Sharif has made contradictory statements regarding the ownership of the London flats. He also stated that the prime minister has evaded tax, adding that Marriam Nawaz Sharif was a dependent and remain a dependent. The Qatari prince’s letter has totally negated the prime minister’s earlier stance.

The case was adjourned until next Tuesday.

Courtesy:

Published in The Express Tribune, December 1st, 2016.

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