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The tribal area of Pakistan’s North Waziristan, along the border of Afghanistan, has been strictly forbidden for foreigners, until now. NBC’s Amna Nawaz gets an exclusive look into ground zero of Pakistan’s fight against terror.
MIRANSHAH, Pakistan — It’s been called the most dangerous place in the most dangerous region on the planet.
A rugged swathe of tribal territory nestled between Pakistan and Afghanistan, Waziristan is ground zero for some of the region’s most notorious militant groups and warlords, including the Pakistani Taliban and Haqqani network.
North and South Waziristan are hit by more U.S. drone attacks than anywhere else in the world.
NBC News obtained rare access to South Waziristan and last week became the first foreign team of journalists to report from North Waziristan.
Long-ignored by the rest of the country, Waziristan is one of the least developed and least educated sections of Pakistan. Literacy rates for women in some areas are in the single digits. With little infrastructure, funding, or investment, many make their living by engaging in criminal activity, cross-border smuggling, or signing up to join militant groups.
The Taliban is believed to pay 10,000 – 12,000 Pakistan rupees a month (roughly $100 – $120) to foot soldiers, with bonuses for carrying out ambushes, killing a soldier, or even members of military families.
Confronting the violence, the Pakistan military is diversifying its campaign in the “war on terror,” no longer just fighting in the region, but also beginning to rebuild it.
“There are only less than half a percent of people who are fighting as terrorists. What about the more than 99.5 percent of people?” asks Maj. Gen. Asim Saleem Bajwa, who commanded the army division in South Waziristan in 2010 before becoming official military spokesman.
Pakistani Army Maj. Gen. Asim Saleem Bajwa discusses the impact the “war on terror” has had on Waziristan. “The motto we adopted was ‘build better than before,'” he told NBC News.
In the wake of a major operation in 2009, the Pakistan Army has largely succeeded in pushing back the militant threat from South Waziristan. The area is now considered secure and tribal communities that fled the fighting are starting to return.
Bajwa realized that if the tribal communities weren’t given something to replace their previous way of life, they might again become willing to help or harbor terrorists.
“Looking at it in a larger security context, you can’t really separate development from security,” said Bajwa. “So we’re doing this to serve the larger purpose as well. “
In the village of Chagh Malai, the army constructed a marketplace, complete with dozens of individual shops carrying everything from cloth to medicine to household supplies. Tribal communities here previously maintained individual shops in their homes or in roadside stalls. The marketplace, army commanders said, gives them a sense of community and a central commercial gathering place. They have plans to build 30 complexes like it across the area.
Tribal elder Akhlas Khan excitedly toured the market last week, introducing store owners and showing off inventory.
“Previously, I’d have to travel four or five hours to get these,” he said, gesturing to a small shop carrying electrical goods. “Now, I only need to come here!”
Pakistan Army commanders on the frontlines of the battle for Waziristan talk about the challenges they face and how important it is to develop this isolated part of the world. NBC News’ Amna Nawaz reports.
TALIBAN AND THEIR PUBLIC FLOGGINGS AND EXECUTIONS
In Sararogha, South Waziristan, an 88-shop market complex now stands at the same site the Taliban — once headquartered here — used to use for public floggings and executions.
“These communities, the vast majority of them, have seen the worst kind of atrocities known to the human race,” said Maj. Gen. Ahmed Mahmood Hayat, commander of the Pakistan Army’s 40th Division in South Waziristan.
“They’ve been subjected to coercion — mental and physical — by the terrorists in order to acquiesce them to support,” he added. “They’ve seen their loved ones being butchered in front of their own eyes. So that is the kind of trauma this society has seen. And therefore the greater the challenge to bring back the confidence of these people into the state machinery.”
Trading routes and schools
At the heart of the army’s plans to rebuild the area is a 370-mile road — funded in large part byUSAID money. The road, half of which is complete, will connect the isolated and insular tribal communities to each other, as well as the rest of mainstream Pakistan and to trading routes across the border in Afghanistan.
When finished, the roadway will offer a third link from Pakistan to Afghanistan, and the army hopes, will encourage business development along its path through Waziristan.
In addition to the road project, the army has taken on development projects far outside its traditional roles.
Waj S. Khan / NBC News
A tribesman waits in line at a ‘Distribution Camp’ set up on the side the newly constructed Tank-Makeen road in South Waziristan. Radios and mattresses are the items of choice popular among locals, who belong to one of the most impoverished communities in Pakistan.
Along with the markets, two military schools, known here as Cadet Colleges, were built in South Waziristan to offer young men a rigorous education and boarding-school environment, unlike any educational opportunity available in the region before.
Col. Zahid Naseem Akbar, principal of the Cadet College, Spinkai, said he hopes the school will gives boys in the area the same opportunities as those elsewhere in the country.
“They have the same potential as any other citizen of this country has,” Akbar said. “And I think we owe it to them that we provide them the opportunity to join the mainstream.”
The army is overseeing the rebuilding to schools demolished by the Taliban and building schools for the first time in some areas, including for girls. The military established the Waziristan Institute for Technical Education — a vocational school to train young men who missed their early education during Taliban rule.
And the army is restoring water supplies and electrical systems and funding what they call “livelihood projects,” training and empowering local small businesses in everything from honey bee farming and fruit orchards, to auto repair and transport services.
“The strategy that the Pakistan army has adopted is a people-centric strategy,” Hayat said. “So the more areas you’ve able to clear, the more infrastructure you’re able to build, the more people you are able to bring back and sustain. Provide them economic opportunities. That is the measure of success.”
Ideal habitat for Taliban
Frontline commanders all say the battle for Waziristan will not be won with hearts and minds alone. Security operations continue, gradually increasing what they call their “elbow space” in the region.
Both North and South Waziristan feature snow-capped peaks, deep valleys, hidden caverns, and daunting mountain ranges which provide natural cover. It’s the ideal habitat for the Taliban and other groups seeking refuge and covert routes for travel between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Amna Nawaz / NBC News
A Pakistani soldier hikes toward an observation post near the border between North and South Waziristan. With little infrastructure, funding, or investment, many in the area make their living by engaging in criminal activity, cross-border smuggling, or signing up to join militant groups.
Atop a 6,000-foot high post in South Waziristan, Brig. Hassan Azhar Hayat said despite securing the area, the struggle to hold it against “pockets of resistance” is constant. His troops, he says, still carry out targeted operations on an almost daily basis.
“That’s why the military’s presence is so important here right now in this area, that we keep increasing our perimeter of security,” Hayat said. “This is guerrilla warfare. It cannot happen that you’re able to eliminate the complete Taliban in any form. So it is different warfare altogether.”
North Waziristan remains the only one of the seven tribal agencies in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in which the Pakistan military has not launched a significant military operation.
Despite public pressure from the U.S. to act, Pakistani commanders there cite the complexity of the region, the politicized nature of the debate, as well as the increasing stakes of the approaching 2014 drawdown of troops across the border as critical to their operation’s timeline.
Mohsin Raza / Reuters
Images of daily life, political pursuits, religious rites and deadly violence.
Maj. Gen. Ali Abbas, the commanding officer of the 7th Infantry Division of the Pakistan Army, currently stationed in North Waziristan, said his region must be considered separately because of the number of influences at play. However, 40,000 troops are stationed in North Waziristan, which shares a 113-mile border with Afghanistan,
“North Waziristan is not like any other agency in Pakistan,” Abbas said. “It’s very different. It’s very complex.”
Despite the territory won and economic investments made, there is concern within the local community about a backslide to the time of Taliban rule. Khan, the tribal elder, doesn’t want the army to leave until the entire area has been won and a civilian administration has taken over control. Army commanders say their commitment is clear.
“The army will stay here as long as the army is desired by the local people to stay here, and mandated by the government of Pakistan to stay here,” Hayat said. “We’re here for the long haul. This is our backyard. We cannot ignore it.”
Communities in South Waziristan have been slow to return to the region after the end of military operations. In some sections, crumbling homes and untended stretches of land dot the landscape. Small clusters of mud-walled homes sit empty. Army commanders hope as word of their development efforts spreads, more of those who fled the fighting will return. They are taking, they say, a very long view.
“If we really want to change this area, the approach is to do it over one generation,” Bajwa added. “Look at the next 10 years. If we put a child in the school now, and 10 years on, we bring him out of the school, we put him into a college, I think we have done our job.”
Reference:
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
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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
Posted by admin in Afghan -Taliban-India Axis, CHINA -PAKISTAN FRIENDSHIP, CHINA SHINING, Defense, ISI, Jahiliya "Jihadis"Illiterate Fanatics, Pakistan Security and Defence: Enemy & Threats (Internal & External), Pakistan's Fights Terrorism, Pakistan-US Relations, SHIA +SUNNI = MUSLIMS=ISLAM=PEACE, THE BATTLE FOR PAKISTAN SERIES on February 24th, 2013
On 27th July 2011, Human Rights Watch had released 132-page report titled “Enforced Disappearances by Pakistan Security Forces in Balochistan”. A few political leaders and government functionaries are of the opinion that it was done on the behest of those powers that are out to disgrace Pakistan military and ISI in the world eyes and prepare the ground to destabilize Pakistan. It was demanded of Pakistan government to immediately end widespread disappearances of suspected militants and activists by the military, intelligence agencies, and the paramilitary Frontier Corps in Balochistan. The report, however, downplayed target killings of innocent civilians, teachers, professors and security personnel in Balochistan by Baloch Liberation Army and other militant organizations. The question can be asked whether the lives of non-Balochis are any less valuable than the lives of Baloch nationalists for Human Rights Watch and other HR organizations?
At the present, militants are actively involved in worsening the security situation in Balochistan, and insurgency has hampered the growth and development of the province. Balochistan is indeed in the throes of ethnic, sectarian and tribal schisms. There have been targeted killings of Punjabi settlers in Balochistan. Ethnic and Shia-Sunni fracas has shaken the erstwhile ethnic and sectarian harmony, as criminal gangs are stoking ethnic and sectarian divisions. It is an irrefutable fact that tribalism is firmly rooted in Balochistan, as ethnic and tribal identity is a potent force for both individuals and groups in Balochistan with the result that there exists deep polarization among different groups. Each of these groups is based on different rules of social organization, which has left the province inexorably fragmented. Tribal group-ism has failed to integrate the state and enforce a national identity. But those who have not weaned off the poison of sham nationalism should take a look at the history of the Balkans, and the fate they met.
In fact, rivaling big powers and even countries of the region eye Balochistan avariciously to push it into their own orbit of influence because it is mineral-rich and strategically-located province. According to political and defence analysts, the US, Russia and India are either directly or indirectly widening the ethnic and sectarian schisms in Balochistan and FATA with a view to advancing their agendas. There are reports that the US and UK are also supporting the centrifugal forces and insurgents in Balochistan. They have double standards; on one hand they punish their traitors, while on the other hand they pressurize Pakistan to be lenient to the separatists and those who challenge the writ of the state. Take the case of Jonathan Pollard, an American citizen, who worked as an American civilian intelligence analyst before being convicted of spying for Israel. He received a life sentence in 1987. Israeli activist groups, as well as high-profile Israeli politicians have since then lobbied for his release, but to no avail.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had voiced particularly strong support for Pollard, and in 2002 visited him in the prison. Pollard was employed in Naval Intelligence Support Center (NISC), but was later transferred at NIC/TF-168. In June 1984, Pollard started passing classified information to Sella and received, in exchange, $10,000 cash and a very expensive diamond and sapphire ring, which Pollard later presented to his girlfriend Anne while proposing her for marriage. He was to receive $1,500 per month for further espionage. Pollard was sentenced to life imprisonment on one count of espionage on March 4, 1987. On the contrary, America has been pressurizing Pakistan to show leniency to Shakil Afridi, and is willing to give American citizenship. If America can award life sentence to its traitors, why Pakistan cannot hand out similar sentence to its traitors? America did not show any leniency to its American national caught for spying for Israel – its strategic partner, and he was put in the jail.
There is much talk about missing persons. Apart from dissident sardars, some media men, analysts, commentariat and chattering classes accuse intelligence agencies of either arresting or killing dissidents. As regards missing persons, there should be high-powered judicial enquiry, which should not only locate missing persons held on various charges but also try to trace them from Ferrari Camps/Detention Centres being run by Baloch Sardars and insurgents. Efforts should be made to identify those militants who were either sent to Afghanistan and India for training. One would not be surprised to find that majority of them would have gone with the consent of Baloch dissidents families. As regards holding negotiations with dissident sardars, the fact of the matter is that whenever efforts were made to hold talks with Sardar Akhtar Mengal, Harbiyar Marri and Brahamdagh Bugti they balked at negotiations on the ground that the elected government is not in a position to address their grievances, as it has no powers. They openly talk about disintegration of Pakistan. Since majority of people of Balochistan are not with the dissident sardars, their efforts to cause harm to Pakistan would fail.
—The writer is Lahore-based senior journalist.
According to reports, the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has claimed responsibility for the attack. Billed as a “Sunni extremist group,” it instead fits the pattern of global terrorism sponsored by the US, Israel, and their Arab partners Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
The terrorist Lashkar-e-Jhangvi group was in fact created, according to the BBC, to counter Iran’s Islamic Revolution in the 1980’s, and is still active today. Considering the openly admitted US-Israeli-Saudi plot to use Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups across the Middle East to counter Iran’s influence, it begs the question whether these same interests are funding terrorism in Pakistan to not only counter Iranian-sympathetic Pakistani communities, but to undermine and destabilize Pakistan itself.
The US-Saudi Global Terror Network
While the United States is close allies with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, it is well established that the chief financier of extremist militant groups for the past 3 decades, including al-Qaeda, are in fact Saudi Arabia and Qatar. While Qatari state-owned propaganda like Al Jazeera apply a veneer of progressive pro-democracy to its narratives, Qatar itself is involved in arming, funding, and even providing direct military support for sectarian extremists from northern Mali, to Libya, to Syria and beyond.
France 24’s report “Is Qatar fuelling the crisis in north Mali?” provides a useful vignette of Saudi-Qatari terror sponsorship, stating:
“The MNLA [secular Tuareg separatists], al Qaeda-linked Ansar Dine and MUJAO [movement for unity and Jihad in West Africa] have all received cash from Doha.”
A month later Sadou Diallo, the mayor of the north Malian city of Gao [which had fallen to the Islamists] told RTL radio: “The French government knows perfectly well who is supporting these terrorists. Qatar, for example, continues to send so-called aid and food every day to the airports of Gao and Timbuktu.”
The report also stated:
“Qatar has an established a network of institutions it funds in Mali, including madrassas, schools and charities that it has been funding from the 1980s,” he wrote, adding that Qatar would be expecting a return on this investment.
“Mali has huge oil and gas potential and it needs help developing its infrastructure,” he said. “Qatar is well placed to help, and could also, on the back of good relations with an Islamist-ruled north Mali, exploit rich gold and uranium deposits in the country.”
These institutions are present not only in Mali, but around the world, and provide a nearly inexhaustible supply of militants for both the Persian Gulf monarchies and their Western allies to use both as a perpetual casus belli to invade and occupy foreign nations such as Mali and Afghanistan, as well as a sizable, persistent mercenary force, as seen in Libya and Syria. Such institutions jointly run by Western intelligence agencies across Europe and in America, fuel domestic fear-mongering and the resulting security state that allows Western governments to more closely control their populations as they pursue reckless, unpopular policies at home and abroad.
Since Saudi-Qatari geopolitical interests are entwined with Anglo-American interests, both the “investment” and “return on this investment” are clearly part of a joint venture. France’s involvement in Mali has demonstrably failed to curb such extremists, has instead, predictably left the nation occupied by Western interests while driving terrorists further north into the real target, Algeria.
Additionally, it should be noted, that France in particular, played a leading role along side Qatar and Saudi Arabia in handing Libya over to these very same extremists. French politicians were in Benghazi shaking hands with militants they would be “fighting” in the near future in northern Mali.
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is Part of US-Saudi Terror Network
In terms of Pakistan’s Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, as well as the infamous Lashkar-e-Taiba that carried out the 2008 Mumbai, India attack killing over 160, both are affiliates of Al Qaeda, and both have been linked financially, directly to Saudi Arabia. In the Guardian’s article, “WikiLeaks cables portray Saudi Arabia as a cash machine for terrorists,” the US State Department even acknowledges that Saudi Arabia is indeed funding terrorism in Pakistan:
Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest source of funds for Islamist militant groups such as the Afghan Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba – but the Saudi government is reluctant to stem the flow of money, according to Hillary Clinton.
“More needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaida, the Taliban, LeT and other terrorist groups,” says a secret December 2009 paper signed by the US secretary of state. Her memo urged US diplomats to redouble their efforts to stop Gulf money reaching extremists in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
“Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide,” she said.
Three other Arab countries are listed as sources of militant money: Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has also been financially linked to the Persian Gulf monarchies. Stanford University’s “Mapping Militant Organizations: Lashkar-e-Jhangvi,” states under “External Influences:”
LeJ has received money from several Persian Gulf countries including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates[25] These countries funded LeJ and other Sunni militant groups primarily to counter the rising influence of Iran’s revolutionary Shiism.
Astonishingly, despite these admission, the US works politically, financially, economically, and even militarily in tandem with these very same state-sponsors of rampant, global terrorism. In Libya and Syria, the US has even assisted in the funding and arming of Al Qaeda and affiliated terrorist groups, and had conspired with Saudi Arabia since at least 2007 to overthrow both Syria and Iran with these terrorist groups. And while Saudi Arabia funds terrorism in Pakistan, the US is well documented to be funding political subversion in the very areas where the most heinous attacks are being carried out.
US Political Subversion in Baluchistan, Pakistan
The US State Department’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has been directly funding and supporting the work of the “Balochistan Institute for Development” (BIFD) which claims to be “the leading resource on democracy, development and human rights in Balochistan, Pakistan.” In addition to organizing the annual NED-BFID “Workshop on Media, Democracy & Human Rights” BFID reports that USAID had provided funding for a “media-center” for the Baluchistan Assembly to “provide better facilities to reporters who cover the proceedings of the Balochistan Assembly.” We must assume BFID meant reporters “trained” at NED-BFID workshops.
There is also Voice of Balochistan whose every top-story is US-funded propaganda drawn from foundation-funded Reporters Without Borders, Soros-funded Human Rights Watch, and even a direct message from the US State Department itself. Like other US State Department funded propaganda outfits around the world – such as Thailand’s Prachatai – funding is generally obfuscated in order to maintain “credibility” even when the front’s constant torrent of obvious propaganda more than exposes them.
Perhaps the most absurd operations being run to undermine Pakistan through the “Free Baluchistan” movement are the US and London-based organizations. The “Baloch Society of North America” almost appears to be a parody at first, but nonetheless serves as a useful aggregate and bellwether regarding US meddling in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province. The group’s founder, Dr. Wahid. Baloch, openly admits he has met with US politicians in regards to Baluchistan independence. This includes Neo-Con warmonger, PNAC signatory, corporate-lobbyist, and National Endowment for Democracy director Zalmay Khalilzad.
Dr. Wahid Baloch considers Baluchistan province “occupied” by both the Iranian and Pakistani governments – he and his movement’s humanitarian hand-wringing gives Washington the perfect pretext to create an armed conflagration against either Iran or Pakistan, or both, as planned in detail by various US policy think-tanks.
There is also the Baloch Students Organisation-Azad, or BSO. While it maintains a presence in Pakistan, it has coordinators based in London. London-based BSO members include “information secretaries” that propagate their message via social media, just as US and British-funded youth organizations did during the West’s operations against other targeted nations during the US-engineered “Arab Spring.”
And while the US does not openly admit to funding and arming terrorists in Pakistan yet, many across established Western policy think-tanks have called for it.
Selig Harrison, a Pro-Israel Zionist of the convicted criminal, George Soros-funded Center for International Policy, has published two pieces regarding the armed “liberation” of Baluchistan.
Harrison’s February 2011 piece, “Free Baluchistan,” calls to “aid the 6 million Baluch insurgents fighting for independence from Pakistan in the face of growing ISI repression.” He continues by explaining the various merits of such meddling by stating:
“Pakistan has given China a base at Gwadar in the heart of Baluch territory. So an independent Baluchistan would serve U.S. strategic interests in addition to the immediate goal of countering Islamist forces.”
Harrison would follow up his frank call to carve up Pakistan by addressing the issue of Chinese-Pakistani relations in a March 2011 piece titled, “The Chinese Cozy Up to the Pakistanis.” He states:
“China’s expanding reach is a natural and acceptable accompaniment of its growing power-but only up to a point. ”
He continues:
“To counter what China is doing in Pakistan, the United States should play hardball by supporting the movement for an independent Baluchistan along the Arabian Sea and working with Baluch insurgents to oust the Chinese from their budding naval base at Gwadar. Beijing wants its inroads into Gilgit and Baltistan to be the first step on its way to an Arabian Sea outlet at Gwadar.”
While aspirations of freedom and independence are used to sell Western meddling in Pakistan, the geopolitical interests couched behind this rhetoric is openly admitted to. The prophetic words of Harrison should ring loud in one’s ears today. It is in fact this month, that Pakistan officially hands over the port in Gwadar to China, and Harrison’s armed militants are creating bloodshed and chaos, attempting to trigger a destructive sectarian war that will indeed threaten to “oust the Chinese from their budding naval base at Gwadar.”
Like in Syria, we have a documented conspiracy years in the making being carried out before our very eyes. The people of Pakistan must not fall into the trap laid by the West who seeks to engulf Baluchistan in sectarian bloodshed with the aid of Saudi and Qatari-laundered cash and weapons. For the rest of the world, we must continue to uncover the corporate-financier special interests driving these insidious plots, boycott and permanently replace them on a local level.
The US-Saudi terror racket has spilled blood from New York City, across Northern Africa, throughout the Middle East, and as far as Pakistan and beyond. If we do not undermine and ultimately excise these special interests, their plans and double games will only get bolder and the inevitability of their engineered chaos effecting us individually will only grow.
TC/JR
Posted by admin in "Jihadi" Outfits of Terrorism, Afghan -Taliban-India Axis, Foreign Policy, Hypocrites in Islam, India, Jahiliya "Jihadis"Illiterate Fanatics, MUSLIMS, OUTRAGE AGAINST MUSLIM GENOCIDE, Pakistan Fights Terrorism, Pakistan's Fights Terrorism, SHIA +SUNNI = MUSLIMS=ISLAM=PEACE on February 23rd, 2013
Saudi & Iranian should take their battles elsewhere, Pakistan is not up for sale as a battleground for the destruction of Shia-Sunni Unity. The blood of 1,200 Pakistanis Shias of Hazarawal ethnicity is on the hands of Saudi sponsored proxies, the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi. They are a creation of Saudi money
Iran soon rattled its own sabers. Iranian parliamentarian Ruhollah Hosseinian urged the Islamic Republic to put its military forces on high alert, reported the website for Press TV, the state-run English-language news agency. “I believe that the Iranian government should not be reluctant to prepare the country’s military forces at a time that Saudi Arabia has dispatched its troops to Bahrain,” he was quoted as saying.
The intensified wrangling across the Persian—or, as the Saudis insist, the Arabian—Gulf has strained relations between the U.S. and important Arab allies, helped to push oil prices into triple digits and tempered U.S. support for some of the popular democracy movements in the Arab world. Indeed, the first casualty of the Gulf showdown has been two of the liveliest democracy movements in countries right on the fault line, Bahrain and the turbulent frontier state of Yemen.
Saudi Arabia’s flag
Source: Military Balance
But many worry that the toll could wind up much worse if tensions continue to ratchet upward. They see a heightened possibility of actual military conflict in the Gulf, where one-fifth of the world’s oil supplies traverse the shipping lanes between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Growing hostility between the two countries could make it more difficult for the U.S. to exit smoothly from Iraq this year, as planned. And, perhaps most dire, it could exacerbate what many fear is a looming nuclear arms race in the region.
Iran has long pursued a nuclear program that it insists is solely for the peaceful purpose of generating power, but which the U.S. and Saudi Arabia believe is really aimed at producing a nuclear weapon. At a recent security conference, Prince Turki al Faisal, a former head of the Saudi intelligence service and ambassador to the U.K. and the U.S., pointedly suggested that if Iran were to develop a weapon, Saudi Arabia might well feel pressure to develop one of its own.
The Saudis currently rely on the U.S. nuclear umbrella and on antimissile defense systems deployed throughout the Persian Gulf region. The defense systems are intended to intercept Iranian ballistic missiles that could be used to deliver nuclear warheads. Yet even Saudis who virulently hate Iran have a hard time believing that the Islamic Republic would launch a nuclear attack against the birthplace of their prophet and their religion. The Iranian leadership says it has renounced the use of nuclear weapons.
How a string of hopeful popular protests has brought about a showdown of regional superpowers is a tale as convoluted as the alliances and history of the region. It shows how easily the old Middle East, marked by sectarian divides and ingrained rivalries, can re-emerge and stop change in its tracks.
There has long been bad blood between the Saudis and Iran. Saudi Arabia is a Sunni Muslim kingdom of ethnic Arabs, Iran a Shiite Islamic republic populated by ethnic Persians. Shiites first broke with Sunnis over the line of succession after the death of the Prophet Mohammed in the year 632; Sunnis have regarded them as a heretical sect ever since. Arabs and Persians, along with many others, have vied for the land and resources of the Middle East for almost as long.
These days, geopolitics also plays a role. The two sides have assembled loosely allied camps. Iran holds in its sway Syria and the militant Arab groups Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories; in the Saudi sphere are the Sunni Muslim-led Gulf monarchies, Egypt, Morocco and the other main Palestinian faction, Fatah. The Saudi camp is pro-Western and leans toward tolerating the state of Israel. The Iranian grouping thrives on its reputation in the region as a scrappy “resistance” camp, defiantly opposed to the West and Israel.
For decades, the two sides have carried out a complicated game of moves and countermoves. With few exceptions, both prefer to work through proxy politicians and covertly funded militias, as they famously did during the long Lebanese civil war in the late 1970s and 1980s, when Iran helped to hatch Hezbollah among the Shiites while the Saudis backed Sunni militias.
But the maneuvering extends far beyond the well-worn battleground of Lebanon. Two years ago, the Saudis discovered Iranian efforts to spread Shiite doctrine in Morocco and to use some mosques in the country as a base for similar efforts in sub-Saharan Africa. After Saudi emissaries delivered this information to King Mohammed VI, Morocco angrily severed diplomatic relations with Iran, according to Saudi officials and cables obtained by the organization WikiLeaks.
As far away as Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, the Saudis have watched warily as Iranian clerics have expanded their activities—and they have responded with large-scale religious programs of their own there.
Reuters
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (above, in 2008) has recently compared the region’s protests to Iran’s 1979 revolution.
In Riyadh, Saudi officials watched with alarm. They became furious when the Obama administration betrayed, to Saudi thinking, a longtime ally in Mr. Mubarak and urged him to step down in the face of the street demonstrations.
The Egyptian leader represented a key bulwark in what Riyadh perceives as a great Sunni wall standing against an expansionist Iran. One part of that barrier had already crumbled in 2003 when the U.S. invasion of Iraq toppled Saddam Hussein. Losing Mr. Mubarak means that the Saudis now see themselves as the last Sunni giant left in the region.
The Saudis were further agitated when the protests crept closer to their own borders. In Yemen, on their southern flank, young protesters were suddenly rallying thousands, and then tens of thousands, of their fellow citizens to demand the ouster of the regime, led by President Ali Abdullah Saleh and his family for 43 years.
Meanwhile, across a narrow expanse of water on Saudi Arabia’s northeast border, protesters in Bahrain rallied in the hundreds of thousands around a central roundabout in Manama. Most Bahraini demonstrators were Shiites with a long list of grievances over widespread economic and political discrimination. But some Sunnis also participated, demanding more say in a government dominated by the Al-Khalifa family since the 18th century.
Protesters deny that their goals had anything to do with gaining sectarian advantage. Independent observers, including the U.S. government, saw no sign that the protests were anything but homegrown movements arising from local problems. During a visit to Bahrain, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates urged the government to adopt genuine political and social reform.
But to the Saudis, the rising disorder on their borders fit a pattern of Iranian meddling. A year earlier, they were convinced that Iran was stoking a rebellion in Yemen’s north among a Shiite-dominated rebel group known as the Houthis. Few outside observers saw extensive ties between Iran and the Houthis. But the Saudis nonetheless viewed the nationwide Yemeni protests in that context.
Reuters
Saudi Arabian troops cross the causeway leading to Bahrain on March 14, above. The ruling family in Bahrain had appealed for assistance in dealing with protests.
In Bahrain, where many Shiites openly nurture cultural and religious ties to Iran, the Saudis saw the case as even more open-and-shut. To their ears, these suspicions were confirmed when many Bahraini protesters moved beyond demands for greater political and economic participation and began demanding a constitutional monarchy or even the outright ouster of the Al-Khalifa family. Many protesters saw these as reasonable responses to years of empty promises to give the majority Shiites a real share of power—and to the vicious government crackdown that had killed seven demonstrators to that point.
But to the Saudis, not to mention Bahrain’s ruling family, even the occasional appearance of posters of Lebanese Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah amid crowds of Shiite protesters pumping their fists and chanting demands for regime change was too much. They saw how Iran’s influence has grown in Shiite-majority Iraq, along their northern border, and they were not prepared to let that happen again.
As for the U.S., the Saudis saw calls for reform as another in a string of disappointments and outright betrayals. Back in 2002, the U.S. had declined to get behind an offer from King Abdullah (then Crown Prince) to rally widespread Arab recognition for Israel in exchange for Israel’s acceptance of borders that existed before the 1967 Six Day War—a potentially historic deal, as far as the Saudis were concerned. And earlier this year, President Obama declined a personal appeal from the king to withhold the U.S. veto at the United Nations from a resolution condemning continued Israeli settlement building in Jerusalem and the West Bank.
The Saudis believe that solving the issue of Palestinian statehood will deny Iran a key pillar in its regional expansionist strategy—and thus bring a win for the forces of Sunni moderation that Riyadh wants to lead.
Iran, too, was starting to see a compelling case for action as one Western-backed regime after another appeared to be on the ropes. It ramped up its rhetoric and began using state media and the regional Arab-language satellite channels it supports to depict the pro-democracy uprisings as latter-day manifestations of its own revolution in 1979. “Today the events in the North of Africa, Egypt, Tunisia and certain other countries have another sense for the Iranian nation.… This is the same as ‘Islamic Awakening,’ which is the result of the victory of the big revolution of the Iranian nation,” said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iran also broadcast speeches by Hezbollah’s leader into Bahrain, cheering the protesters on. Bahraini officials say that Iran went further, providing money and even some weapons to some of the more extreme opposition members. Protest leaders vehemently deny any operational or political links to Iran, and foreign diplomats in Bahrain say that they have seen little evidence of it.
March 14 was the critical turning point. At the invitation of Bahrain, Saudi armed vehicles and tanks poured across the causeway that separates the two countries. They came representing a special contingent under the aegis of the Gulf Cooperation Council, a league of Sunni-led Gulf states, but the Saudis were the major driver. The Saudis publicly announced that 1,000 troops had entered Bahrain, but privately they concede that the actual number is considerably higher.
If both Iran and Saudi Arabia see themselves responding to external threats and opportunities, some analysts, diplomats and democracy advocates see a more complicated picture. They say that the ramping up of regional tensions has another source: fear of democracy itself.
Long before protests ousted rulers in the Arab world, Iran battled massive street protests of its own for more than two years. It managed to control them, and their calls for more representative government or outright regime change, with massive, often deadly, force. Yet even as the government spun the Arab protests as Iranian inspired, Iran’s Green Revolution opposition movement managed to use them to boost their own fortunes, staging several of their best-attended rallies in more than a year.
Saudi Arabia has kept a wary eye on its own population of Shiites, who live in the oil-rich Eastern Province directly across the water from Bahrain. Despite a small but energetic activist community, Saudi Arabia has largely avoided protests during the Arab Spring, something that the leadership credits to the popularity and conciliatory efforts of King Abdullah. But there were a smattering of small protests and a few clashes with security services in the Eastern Province.
The regional troubles have come at a tricky moment domestically for Saudi Arabia. King Abdullah, thought to be 86 years old, was hospitalized in New York, receiving treatment for a back injury, when the Arab protests began. The Crown Prince, Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, is only slightly younger and is already thought to be too infirm to become king. Third in line, Prince Nayaf bin Abdul Aziz, is around 76 years old.
Viewing any move toward more democracy at home—at least on anyone’s terms but their own—as a threat to their regimes, the regional superpowers have changed the discussion, observers say. The same goes, they say, for the Bahraini government. “The problem is a political one, but sectarianism is a winning card for them,” says Jasim Husain, a senior member of the Wefaq Shiite opposition party in Bahrain.
Since March 14, the regional cold war has escalated. Kuwait expelled several Iranian diplomats after it discovered and dismantled, it says, an Iranian spy cell that was casing critical infrastructure and U.S. military installations. Iran and Saudi Arabia are, uncharacteristically and to some observers alarmingly, tossing direct threats at each other across the Gulf. The Saudis, who recently negotiated a $60 billion arms deal with the U.S. (the largest in American history), say that later this year they will increase the size of their armed forces and National Guard.
And recently the U.S. has joined in warning Iran after a trip to the region by Defense Secretary Gates to patch up strained relations with Arab monarchies, especially Saudi Arabia. Minutes after meeting with King Abdullah, Mr. Gates told reporters that he had seen “evidence” of Iranian interference in Bahrain. That was followed by reports from U.S. officials that Iranian leaders were exploring ways to support Bahraini and Yemeni opposition parties, based on communications intercepted by U.S. spy agencies.
Saudi officials say that despite the current friction in the U.S.-Saudi relationship, they won’t break out of the traditional security arrangement with Washington, which is based on the understanding that the kingdom works to stabilize global oil prices while the White House protects the ruling family’s dynasty. Washington has pulled back from blanket support for democracy efforts in the region. That has bruised America’s credibility on democracy and reform, but it has helped to shore up the relationship with Riyadh.
A look at the Sunni-Shiite divide in the Middle East and some of the key flashpoints in the cold war between Saudi Arabia and Iran
The deployment into Bahrain was also the beginning of what Saudi officials describe as their efforts to directly parry Iran. While Saudi troops guard critical oil and security facilities in their neighbor’s land, the Bahraini government has launched a sweeping and often brutal crackdown on demonstrators.
It forced out the editor of the country’s only independent newspaper. More than 400 demonstrators have been arrested without charges, many in violent night raids on Shiite villages. Four have died in custody, according to human-rights groups. Three members of the national soccer team, all Shiites, have also been arrested. As many as 1,000 demonstrators who missed work during the protests have been fired from state companies.
In Shiite villages such as Saar, where a 14-year-old boy was killed by police and a 56-year-old man disappeared overnight and showed up dead the next morning, protests have continued sporadically. But in the financial district and areas where Sunni Muslims predominate, the demonstrations have ended.
In Yemen, the Saudis, also working under a Gulf Cooperation Council umbrella, have taken control of the political negotiations to transfer power out of the hands of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, according to two Saudi officials.
“We stayed out of the process for a while, but now we have to intervene,” said one official. “It’s that, or watch our southern flank disintegrate into chaos.”
Corrections & Amplifications
King Mohammed VI is the ruler of Morocco. An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the ruler was Hassan II.
—Nada Raad and Farnaz Fassihi contributed to this article.
We have Zero Tolerance for Sectarian Terrorism. Let there be no doubt. These Jihadis are turning on than that fed them during the Soviet Afghan War. Taliban are no different than any other Dogs of War, at the pay of any Master, who sponsors them.
Iran and Saudi Arabia have stabbed Pakistan on the back. They have taken undue advantage of our love and friendship and used our soil to fight their proxy battles. These two nations, whom Pakistanis have served to educate and taught them basic health care skills, have returned our favours by making our nation their killing field. They have brainwashed our people through their own tarnished brand of faith and used them through financial incentives, to fight their sectarian wars.
These Jihadis need to be arrested en masse in all cities of Pakistan and Deprogrammed by Islamic Scholars from all Fiqh of Islam. Without a massive deprogramming process, they will continue to create turmoil in Pakistan. Their heinous behavior involves attacking most weak and vulnerable. These cowards have chosen the defenceless, innocent, and peaceful Hazawal Pakistanis, who cannot fight back.
Quetta is not a playground for the Un-Islamic “Jihadi” Fanatics, funded by Saudis and Iran. Pakistani blood is not cheap it is precious. All Pakistanis need to close ranks and fight the Takfiri Jihadis. They do not represent Islam and its Core Values. Islam does NOT teach killing innocent men, women, and children, whether Muslims or Non-Muslim, or Atheists. Islam is a Deen, which protects the sanctity of human life and protects minorities.
The communist kafirs of the Evil Soviet Empire have been defeated. US forces is exiting Afghanistan in 2014. Takfiris should be offered a choice either get educated in a state registered Darul Uloom or be mainstreamed in an Islamic University. But, they should never be left by alone to practice their heinous ideology. Pakistan is not a battlefield for hire, for Iran versus Saudi Arabs Un-Islamic Sectarian Wars.
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