ALEEM AGHA and NICK SCHIFRIN
ABC News
January 3, 2009
The informant was a Pakistani and a member of the Wazir tribe from the Pakistani tribal area North Waziristan, according to the same source. The base security director, an Afghan named Arghawan, would pick up the informant at the Ghulam Khan border crossing and drive him about two hours into Forward Operating Base Chapman, from where the CIA operates.
Missiles from US Predator drones struck a village in Pakistan over the weekend, killing at least 13 people. The attack coincided with reports of intensified operations by US Special Forces killing squads on the Afghanistan side of the border.
Amounting to targeted assassinations, these forms of warfare are the most evident feature in the first stages of the “surge” ordered earlier this month by President Barack Obama, who is sending at least 30,000 more US troops into Afghanistan.
The methods are indicative of a dirty colonial-style war to suppress resistance to an occupation that is aimed at establishing Washington’s dominance in the energy-rich and strategically vital region of Central Asia.
Citing Pakistani officials, the Lahore-based daily The Nation reported Sunday that the death toll in a drone attack on a village in North Waziristan had risen to 13. Two missiles reportedly struck a compound in Saidgi village, about four miles from North Waziristan’s principal town, Miranshah.
The drones continued hovering over the area, while a US B-52 bomber also conducted over-flights, terrorizing the local population, according to Pakistani media reports.
The missile strike marked the third such attack on North Waziristan since December 17. The area is part of Pakistan’s northwest tribal region, which has been used by elements of the Afghan resistance, backed by fellow Pashtun tribesmen in Pakistan, to launch attacks on the US-led occupation forces in Afghanistan.
The deadly drone campaign has been directed by the US Central Intelligence Agency, using a clandestine airfield in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan and with CIA operatives sitting in front of video screens in Langley, Virginia, directing the missiles to their targets. The Pentagon is reportedly conducting its own drone attacks.
The Obama administration has sharply escalated the drone attacks, launching more than twice as many over the past year as the Bush administration carried out in its last year in office. The secretive nature of the CIA program is designed in large part to obscure the horrific toll in civilian lives inflicted through the firing of Hellfire missiles into Pakistani villages.
As with virtually all of these attacks, the US media parroted unnamed intelligence officials in claiming that the victims of the latest missile strike were all “militants,” without any corroboration of who had been killed.
The Lahore newspaper The News, citing figures supplied by Pakistani officials, reported in April that 687 civilians had been killed in approximately 60 drone strikes that had been carried out since January 2008. Given that fatality rate, with nearly 30 drone attacks having been launched since, the number of Pakistani civilians slaughtered in this fashion could easily have topped 1,000.
Over the last two years, the Pakistani government—both that of military dictator Pervez Musharraf and that of his successor, Pakistan People’s Party President Asif Ali Zardari—had worked out a modus operandi with Washington whereby Pakistan publicly protested the drone attacks and demanded that they cease, while behind the scenes giving them a green light.
US officials had portrayed the missile strikes as an attempt to kill leaders of al Qaeda. The latest series of attacks, however, has been launched specifically against Afghanistan resistance elements that US military and intelligence agencies refer to as the Haqqani network, named for its leader Jalaluddin Haqqani, who operated out of the same North Waziristan sanctuary in the 1980s. Then he was one of the principal recipients of US arms and aid in the CIA-backed war against the Soviet-aligned regime in Kabul.
Since the announcement of the Afghanistan surge, Washington has been pressing the Pakistani government to send its troops against the Haqqani group and other forces aligned with the Afghan Taliban operating out of North Waziristan, just across border from Afghanistan. Islamabad has refused, however, citing its ongoing military campaign in South Waziristan, which is part of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata).
The campaign in South Waziristan is directed against Pakistani Islamist insurgents blamed for a series of attacks across the northwest of the country.
As the Washington Post pointed out, the Pakistani government concluded a truce with the local warlord in North Waziristan, Hafiz Gul Bahadur, in return for his forces keeping out of the fighting in the south.
“Missile strikes on his territory could endanger that deal,” according to the Post, which added, “However, the United States has indicated in the past that it will not hesitate to launch the drone-fired missiles if it tracks down an important target.”
In recent weeks, US officials and military commanders have ratcheted up the pressure on the Pakistani government, warning that if it did not act in North Waziristan, the US military and CIA would intervene unilaterally.
The New York Times reported Monday that the US military is making increasing use of its secretive Special Operations units as a key component of Obama’s Afghanistan “surge.” These forces—including the Army Delta Force and Navy Seals—are employed in finding and killing Afghans who are identified as leaders or supporters of the fight against the US-led occupation of their country.
Raids by Special Operations forces had been halted last February on the orders of the head of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), Vice Admiral William McRaven. The raids were inflicting so many civilian casualties that they were generating popular support for the insurgents that outweighed the military importance of killing supposed leaders of the resistance. The suspension of these operations lasted only two weeks.
Now, General Stanley McChrystal, the top US commander in Afghanistan, has ordered that these attacks by Special Operations troops be greatly expanded. Before assuming command in Afghanistan, McChrystal had been McRaven’s predecessor as head of JSOC, where units under his command were implicated in the torture of detained civilians in Iraq.
The unleashing of these clandestine units against suspected leaders of the Afghanistan resistance will undoubtedly mean another sharp increase in the killing of civilian men, women and children.
The Times also reported that similar death squad operations are being mounted across the border in Pakistan, under the direction of the CIA.
Citing an unnamed official in Pakistan’s military intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the Times reported that there have been “more than 60 joint operations involving the ISI and the CIA in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Baluchistan in the past year.”
According to the paper, “the missions included ‘snatch and grabs’—the abduction of important militants—as well as efforts to kill leaders.”
The surge ordered by Obama will mean a sharp escalation of the violence on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, as well as an intensification of the social and political crisis gripping the entire region as a result of the US war.
Both Afghanistan and Pakistan were included among the countries confronting the 10 worst humanitarian crises in an annual listing released by the French-based medical aid group, Doctors without Borders.
“Afghan civilians endured increasing levels of violence throughout the country” over the past year, the group reported. The fighting has brought the country’s health care system to the brink of collapse, and Afghans needing medical care “must now make an impossible choice: risk traveling hundreds of miles through a war zone to seek a medical care or allow a condition to worsen until it becomes life-threatening only to arrive at a health structure where services are greatly diminished.”
US-led occupation forces, the report said, “have co-opted [medical] assistance for ‘hearts and minds’ initiatives, occupied hospitals, and arrested patients in their beds.”
Pakistan “was convulsed by intense violence throughout 2009,” the report stated, worsening an already desperate situation. “Across the country, people suffer from a general lack of health care, and Pakistan features one of the highest infant and maternal mortality rates in the region.”
The campaigns by the Pakistani military, egged on by Washington, created more than 2 million refugees from the Swat Valley and another 300,000 from North Waziristan, according to Doctors Without Borders. The military offensive forced the group to halt its medical assistance in Swat Valley, where it had supported the local hospital and provided ambulance services.
Hospitals and health clinics set up in displacement camps in neighboring districts were “overwhelmed,” the group reported, with patients suffering from “serious war-related injuries, among them children with gunshot- and explosive-related wounds.”
The past year has also seen a precipitous rise in the number of US troops killed and wounded. Fatalities in Afghanistan for US occupation forces have reached 310 since the beginning of 2009, double the number killed last year. Roughly 2,500 American troops have been wounded during the same period, many of them suffering amputations and severe burns and head injuries resulting from roadside bomb attacks.
As US military commanders readily acknowledge, the pouring of 30,000 more American troops and tens of thousands more private military contractors into Afghanistan will mean a dramatic increase in the killing and dying produced by the eight-year-old US war.
| WRITTEN BY CHRIS FLOYD |
| MONDAY, 31 AUGUST 2009 14:34 |
The American client government in Iraq has embarked on a remarkable campaign of diplomatic hostilities with its neighbor, Syria, accusing Damascus of, among other things, the modern-day blood libel that immediate consigns a nation to diplomatic hell, and makes it a target for what George W. Bush used to call "the path of action": supporting al Qaeda. A few months before PNAC's prophetic 2000 report [which longed for "a new Pearl Harbor" to "catalyze" the American people into supporting a vast and profitable militarist agenda], an allied group with an overlapping membership published a similar document outlining steps to be taken against Syria: first "tightening the screws" with denunciations and economic sanctions, then escalating to military action, as Jim Lobe of Inter-Press Agency reports. The architects of this document included Elliot Abrams, the convicted perjurer now running Bush's Middle East policy; Douglas Feith, one of Shifty's top aides; Paula Dobriansky, undersecretary to Colin Powell, and influential Pentagon advisors such as David Wurmser, Michael Leeden and everyone's sweetheart, Richard "Influence-Peddler" Perle.
|
WASHINGTON — Senior leaders of al Qaeda are using sanctuaries in Pakistan’s lawless frontier regions to plan new terror attacks and funnel money, manpower and guidance to affiliates around the world, according to a top American military commander.
Gen. David Petraeus, who oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, said in an interview that Pakistan has become the nerve center of al Qaeda’s global operations, allowing the terror group to re-establish its organizational structure and build stronger ties to al Qaeda offshoots in Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, North Africa and parts of Europe.
The comments underscore a growing U.S. belief that Pakistan has displaced Afghanistan as al Qaeda’s main stronghold. “It is the headquarters of the al Qaeda senior leadership,” said the general, who took the helm of the military’s Central Command last fall.
In the interview, Gen. Petraeus also warned of difficult months ahead in Afghanistan, saying Taliban militants are moving weapons and forces into areas where the U.S. is adding troops, planning a “surge” of their own to counter the U.S. plan.
In the interview here, NBC’s David Gregory completely ignores Pakistan president Asif Ali Zadari when he declares that Osama bin Laden was an “operator” for the United States. Gregory wants to know if Zadari believes Osama is alive. He wants to know why Pakistan has not gone after Bin Laden.
Before “everything changed” on September 11, 2001, the corporate media published truthful stories about Osama bin Laden and his relationship with the CIA. “As his unclassified CIA biography states, bin Laden left Saudi Arabia to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan after Moscow’s invasion in 1979. By 1984, he was running a front organization known as Maktab al-Khidamar — the MAK — which funneled money, arms and fighters from the outside world into the Afghan war,” Michael Moran wrote for MSNBC on August 24, 1998. “What the CIA bio conveniently fails to specify (in its unclassified form, at least) is that the MAK was nurtured by Pakistan’s state security services, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, the CIA’s primary conduit for conducting the covert war against Moscow’s occupation.”
The CIA’s intimate relationship with Osama bin Laden came to light during a the trial of Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-’Owhali and Khalfan Khamis Mohamed for the 1998 bombings of two American Embassies in Africa. Giles Foden wrote about the “deep and insidious connection” between Osama bin Laden and the CIA on September 13, 2001, for the Guardian.
“FBI investigators examining the embassy bombing sites in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam discovered that evidence led to military explosives from the US Army, and that these explosives had been delivered three years earlier to Afghan Arabs, the infamous international volunteer brigades involved side by side with bin Laden during the Afghan war against the Red Army,” Alexandra Richard wrote for Le Figaro on October 11, 2001.
In the same article Richard reports that a CIA agent met with Osama bin Laden at the American Hospital in Dubai in July, 2001, where the terrorist underwent surgery. “While he was hospitalized, bin Laden received visits from many members of his family as well as prominent Saudis and Emiratis. During the hospital stay, the local CIA agent, known to many in Dubai, was seen taking the main elevator of the hospital to go to bin Laden’s hospital room.”
Not only did the CIA and its ISI partner create MAK and ultimately what the corporate media would call al-Qaeda, they also created the Taliban, although you won’t read that in the New York Times. The ISI organized and the United States, Britain, and the Saudis funded the madrassas (religious schools) that nurtured the fanatical Wahhabi Taliban. “They were literally the orphans of war [a war orchestrated by Zbigniew Brzezinski against the Soviets], the rootless and restless, the jobless and the economically deprived with little self-knowledge. They admired war because it was the only occupation they could possibly adapt to. Their simple belief in a messianic, puritan Islam which had been drummed into them by simple village mullahs was the only prop they could hold on to and which gave their lives some meaning,” writes Phil Gasper.
NBC’s David Gregory might want to ask the CIA or maybe Robert Gates about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden (the current secretary of defense basically ran the Osama operation through Pakistan’s ISI back in the day when he was Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and then CIA director under Bush Senior).
Gregory and NBC are merely setting the stage for Obama’s increased meddling in Pakistan. Part of that effort is to make Asif Ali Zadari look like he is hiding Osama bin Laden and protecting the perennial bogeyman, al-Qaeda.
Zadari, however, knows the truth and is not afraid to speak it on American television: Osama bin Laden was an “operative” for the United States.
by Bill Van Auken | |
Global Research, May 2, 2009 | |
The Obama administration is increasingly treating its growing intervention in Pakistan as a separate counter-insurgency war for which it is demanding the same kind of extraordinary military powers obtained by the Bush administration in Afghanistan and Iraq. This was the main message delivered by Pentagon officials on Capitol Hill over the last few days, together with increasingly dire warnings that without immediate and unconditional US military funding for Pakistan, the government could collapse. Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned Congress Thursday that unless it quickly approved some $400 million requested by the Pentagon for a new Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund the Pakistani military would run out of funding within weeks for its operations against insurgents in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and other areas of western Pakistan. In his testimony, Gates also revealed that, even after the planned closure of the Guantanamo detention center, the US government may still imprison up to 100 of the inmates without charges or trials. The administration asked Congress for $50 million to build prison facilities in the US for detainees it claims are dangerous but cannot be tried, principally because the supposed evidence against them was extracted through torture. The proposed $400 million in military aid for Pakistan is part of an $83.5 billion supplemental funding bill requested by Obama, the vast majority of which goes to pay for continuing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Speaking before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Gates said that the Pentagon was requesting that full control of the military aid be vested with Gen. David Petraeus, the chief of the US military’s Central Command. He claimed that the Pentagon needed “this unique authority for the unique and urgent circumstances we face in Pakistan—for dealing with a challenge that simultaneously requires wartime and peacetime capabilities.” Some members of Congress have balked at the demand, which echoes the heavy-handed tactics of the Bush administration in demanding immediate passage of military funding for Iraq and Afghanistan with no strings attached. As the Washington Post pointed out Friday: “Lawmakers in the House and Senate have voiced concerns about creating the new Pakistan military funding stream through the Pentagon. Traditionally such military aid flows through the State Department and is subject to Foreign Assistance Act restrictions.” The $400 million is part of a $3 billion, five-year aid package that would see another $700 million in military assistance go to Pakistan in fiscal year 2010. The military aid program envisions a major expansion of US training of Pakistani security forces, beyond the 70 US special operations troops whom Islamabad has quietly allowed to train elements of the Frontier Corps and Pakistani special forces units. Pakistani officers and troops would be trained outside the country. In addition, Washington would supply extensive new military hardware, including helicopters, night-vision goggles and small arms. Under US law, the State Department is supposed to oversee military aid programs and ensure that they are carried out in accordance with US foreign policy and legal restrictions on such aid. An exception is made when the US is at war, the grounds claimed by the Bush administration in bypassing civilian authorities in implementing similar programs in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Post quoted Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell as saying that the use of similar arguments in Pakistan involved “walking a pretty fine line.” He continued: “This is not a war zone for the US military. But given the urgency of the situation, we need similar authorities in order to help Pakistan train and equip its troops for counterinsurgency operations ASAP.” General Petraeus made the same point somewhat more forcefully in a letter to the House Armed Services Committee in which he warned of a potential government collapse in Pakistan. He claimed that US “progress” in Iraq and Afghanistan had been achieved because “these funds are immediately available and commanders have been able to rapidly adjust to changing conditions on the ground.” He said that the same free hand for the military was needed in Pakistan, “where a growing insurgency threatens the country’s very existence and has a direct and deadly impact on US and coalition forces operating in Afghanistan.” Privately, Petraeus has reportedly been telling members of congress and the administration that if the Pakistani military does not succeed in suppressing the insurgency in two weeks, the government may fall. Citing anonymous sources who it says are “familiar with the discussions,” Fox News reports that Petraeus indicated that the US military was evaluating the Pakistani campaign against the militants in the northwest of the country “before determining the United States’ next course of action.” The report added that Petraeus expressed the view that the Pakistani army could survive the fall of the government of President Ali Zardari and that the army, led by Chief of Staff Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, is “superior” to the civilian government. This statement echoed the position indicated by President Barack Obama at the Wednesday evening press conference marking his first 100 days in office. Obama said he was confident that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal would remain secure, “Primarily, initially, because the Pakistani army, I think, recognizes the hazards of those weapons falling into the wrong hands.” He added, “We’ve got strong military-to-military consultation and cooperation.” In contrast, the American president described Zardari’s government as “very fragile” and lacking “the capacity to deliver basic services” or “gain the support and the loyalty of their people.” Obama concluded by saying of Pakistan, “We want to respect their sovereignty, but we also recognize that we have huge strategic interests, huge national security interests in making sure that Pakistan is stable and that you don't end up having a nuclear-armed militant state.” When a reporter tried to ask whether that meant the US military could intervene to secure nuclear weapons, Obama refused to “engage in hypotheticals.” The remarks by Obama and Petraeus suggest strongly that Washington is relying first and foremost on the Pentagon’s relationship with the Pakistani military, and that it could, in the event of the deepening of the present crisis, support the return of a military dictatorship. It has been less than nine months since the last military strongman, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, relinquished power to a civilian government after a decade of military rule. This may also explain, at least in part, the determination of the Pentagon, the White House and the State Department to ensure that military aid flows through the military and not by way of normal State Department channels, which are subject to the Foreign Assistance Act. Among the act’s restrictions is a prohibition on granting military aid to “a country whose duly elected head of government was deposed by decree or military coup.” Implicit in Obama’s statement about wanting “to respect their sovereignty, but...” is the threat of direct US military intervention. It is becoming apparent that Obama, who owes his election in no small part to the opposition of broad layers of the US population to the militarist policies of the Bush administration, is not only continuing both of the wars initiated under Bush, but is preparing a third. In an article entitled “Now, US Sees Pakistan as a Cause Distinct from Afghanistan,” the New York Times Friday noted that the original strategy advanced by the Obama administration was to carry out military attacks in the Pakistani border area to deny safe havens for insurgents and further a “surge” in Afghanistan that is to see a doubling of US troops over the next several months. That strategy, the Times notes, has been “utterly scrambled by the Taliban offensive in western Pakistan.” Now Washington’s primary objective is “preventing further gains in Pakistan by an Islamic militant insurgency that has claimed territory just 60 miles from Islamabad.” In an article published April 16, Jane Perlez and Pir Zubair Shah of the New York Times provided an account of the intense class tensions that have fueled the insurgency. The forces described as the Taliban, they wrote, had succeeded in gaining control of the Swat Valley as the result of a “class revolt” stemming from “profound fissures between a small group of wealthy landlords and their landless tenants.” According to this report, the Islamist militants organized and armed the landless peasants in a campaign to drive out the region’s wealthy landlords, who also were the government officials and leaders of the established political parties. In addition to imposing Islamic law over Swat, a region of 1.3 million people, the Islamists carried out a measure of “economic redistribution.” The Times quoted an unnamed senior Pakistani official as saying, “This was a bloody revolution in Swat. I wouldn’t be surprised if it sweeps the established order of Pakistan.” The Obama administration is now intervening to prop up that “established order” of feudal land relations, vast social inequality and military domination over the government. This will involve the suppression of not merely a handful of “terrorists,” but an insurgency with broad-based popular support, which is fueled in large measure by US military attacks on civilians on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border. Having intervened in Afghanistan in 2001 and in Iraq in 2003 with the aim of asserting American hegemony over the strategically vital and oil-rich regions of Central Asia and the Persian Gulf, American imperialism has succeeded only in spreading instability and creating the conditions for new and even more bloody wars. | |
Excerpt: "The problem for US is that BLA alone is not able to break away Baluchistan from Pakistan. Of the 5% population of Baluchistan they don’t even have support of 10% Balochi population. The Pakistan Army and ISI are resisting the assault in national and strategic interests of Pakistan. The Great Game of Brzezinski will surely continue in Baluchistan and rest of Pakistan, the people of Pakistan are ready to counter this great game now we need leadership and some courage. It will take some time to achieve courage and leadership but it will come eventually. Street revolutions are easy to carry out the hard part is the mental revolution. That is what is required right now to challenge the US global hegemony."
Baluchistan is strategically located East of Iran and to the South of Afghanistan. It has a port at Gwadar that was built by China. Gwadar lies at the opening of Strait of Hormuz. Baluchistan has huge quantities of natural gas, and unexplored oil reserves. More importantly US wants to control the port of Gwadar, and eventually start their dream oil pipeline from Central Asia, through Afghanistan into Baluchistan and Gwadar. Baluchistan is the largest province of Pakistan in terms of area and it covers almost 48% of Pakistan’s area. But its population accounts for only 5% of the total population of Pakistan. Ethnically Baluchistan is divided into Balochs, and Pathans, followed by other small minorities. The state capital is Quetta, (recently termed as nerve center of Taliban by US Generals).
Like all histories in South Asia, or Middle East, the history of Baluchistan is long, complex, and would require a long article to cover all the details. So a brief synopsis is sufficient to get us rolling before we come to the point.
Baluchistan like, Afghanistan and Tribal Areas of Pakistan is a tribal society. Many different Sardars (tribal chiefs), rule their respective tribes, often with serious disregard for human rights. Development wise, Baluchistan is the most backward province in Pakistan. There may be some weight in the argument that the federal government in Pakistan has neglected the development of Baluchistan, but equal responsibility lies with the Sardars of Baluchistan who enjoy immense power in their tribes. They are unwilling to come into the main stream society, have monopoly over the laws and regulations of the state, while they themselves sit in provincial and national parliaments, yet they don’t work for the development of their own people.
Baluchistan has the worst human rights record out of all the provinces of Pakistan. Every time horrific human rights atrocities are committed in Baluchistan tribal chiefs defend the abuses by claiming them to be part of their tribal cultural norms. Since the independence of Pakistan, most of the tribes have accepted Pakistan as their homeland and have tried to come into the mainstream Pakistani society. But Bugti and Marri tribal leaders have always been a source of trouble for Pakistan. Currently Brahamdagh Bugti (grandson of former Bugti tribe leader and former chief minister of Baluchistan, Nawab Akbar Bugti5 is the leader of a runaway terrorist group, the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA)4 operating out of Kandhar, Afghanistan. Before Brahamdagh, Balach Marri, son of Nawab Khair Baksh Marri, was leader of BLA, and he was killed in Afghanistan in 2007.
Covert Operations against Pakistan
A new dirty game of geo-politics has already started in Baluchistan, Pakistan. To understand the recent wave of violence in Baluchistan we must understand the vested interests in Baluchistan. The root cause of violence in Baluchistan is not internal poverty or lack of development but the covert operations of foreign intelligence agencies. Internal issues might act as catalysts to inflame the situation but the root cause is foreign interference in internal affairs of Baluchistan. The main group responsible for violence in Baluchistan is the BLA4. Chief of the BLA Brahamdagh Bugti, in his recent interview with Pakistani news channel AAJ TVm declared that he will attack and kill non Baloch population of Baluchistan. In other words he threatened killing of innocent Pakistani civilians on ethnic lines. This is just taking words out of Col Ralph Peter’s plan for balkanization of Pakistan, along the lines of Yugoslavia (June 2006 issue of The Armed Forces Journal). Bugti also asked for support of India and other powers to help him break away Pakistan’s Baluchistan. (For related news read two of my older articles on Axis of Logic, Playing with Fire in Pakistan, - and Now or Never. Pakistan must change its policy in war on terror).
According to Global Research scholar, Michel Chossudovsky:
“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 Baluchistan separatists (which from the outset have been repressed by Pakistan’s military). In June 2006, Pakistan’s Senate Committee on Defense accused British intelligence of "abetting the insurgency in the province bordering Iran" [Baluchistan]..(Press Trust of India, 9 August 2006). Ten British MPs were involved in a closed door session of the Senate Committee on Defense 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."
In a 2006 research article on Baluchistan which was published in Pak Tribune in 2006, Farzana Shah, a current affairs analyst for BrassTacks, a think tank based in Islamabad, highlighted the role which is being played by a British think tank against Baluchistan. Shah writes,
“In this regard the Foreign Policy Centre (FPC) United Kingdom arranged a seminar on Baluchistan province of Pakistan in collaboration with the so-called Baluchistan Rights Movement on 27th June 2006 in the House of Commons, London. It was highly disappointing as it was abashedly a one-sided cheap propaganda rather than discussing the real situation. By a mere look at the panel of the participants of the seminar one could easily figure out that it consisted of only anti-Pakistan elements and some self-styled activists advocating terrorism in the province. There were no representatives from government of Pakistan or even from the elected provincial government of Baluchistan in the seminar. It is just unfortunate that the Foreign Policy Centre which is expected to present fair suggestions to the British government to engage a country of their concern for important issues, indulged in such a blatant one-sided propaganda against Pakistan through the said seminar.”
Shah also points out in the article how a Government of Baluchistan is setup in exile in Jerusalem, Israel. She gives the details in her article.
Two Indian assets: Brahamdagh Bugti & Balach Marri (R). Marri died in an ambush in 2007 while crossing from Afghanistan to Pakistan after meeting his sponsors there.
The question is, what is the role of US, Afghanistan, India, and Iran in Baluchistan quagmire and what is at stake for these countries?
Afghanistan
Afghanistan was the only country that did not welcome Pakistan in 1947 at the time of our independence. The only time when there was no trouble inside Pakistan from Afghanistan was during the time of Taliban rule in Afghanistan. Taliban being Pukhtoon cleaned Afghanistan of Indian and Iranian assets (both India and Iran supports Northern Alliance, which is in government right now in Afghanistan). Afghanistan’s soil has been used again and again to cause trouble inside Pakistan. Currently BLA is operating from Kandahar, Afghanistan. BLA enjoys support from Indian RAW in terms of finances, logistics, and weapons. Recent report of Foreign Affairs, by Christine Fair of RAND Corporation gives us the inside.
“Having visited the Indian mission in Zahedan, Iran, I can assure you they are not issuing visas as the main activity! Moreover, India has run operations from its mission in Mazar, Afghanistan (through which it supported the Northern Alliance) and is likely doing so from the other consulates it has reopened in Jalalabad and Qandahar along the border. Indian officials have told me privately that they are pumping money into Baluchistan. Kabul has encouraged India to engage in provocative activities such as using the Border Roads Organization to build sensitive parts of the Ring Road and use the Indo-Tibetan police force for security. It is also building schools on a sensitive part of the border in Kunar–across from Bajaur (Pakistan’s Tribal Area where Pakistan Army had to carry out a major operation to eliminate TTP6 militants).
"Kabul’s motivations for encouraging these activities are as obvious as India’s interest in engaging in them. Even if by some act of miraculous diplomacy the territorial issues were to be resolved, Pakistan would remain an insecure state. Given the realities of the subcontinent (e.g., India’s rise and its more effective foreign relations with all of Pakistan’s near and far neighbors), these fears are bound to grow, not lessen. This suggests that without some means of compelling Pakistan to abandon its reliance upon militancy, it will become ever more interested in using it — and the militants will likely continue to proliferate beyond Pakistan’s control.”
Iran
Iran historically has enjoyed good relations with its neighbors including Pakistan during the time of Shah of Iran, but since then their relationship with Pakistan and Arab world has deteriorated. Strategically, Iran would like to maintain balance of power tipped in its favor in the region, this means the Pakistan’s strategic interests should be undermined, as they are at the moment. Taliban, Iran’s nemesis in Afghanistan is no longer in power, India, Iran’s ally and Pakistan’s arch enemy is enjoying a strong foothold in Afghanistan at the moment. Iran is also afraid of Jandullah’s covert operations against Iran, from Baluchistan. According to an April 2007 report by Brian Rossand and Christopher Isham of ABC News, the United States governmenthad been secretly encouraging and advising the Jandullah in its attacks.
Jandullah is a terrorist group that was created by CIA, and is responsible for terrorist activities inside Iran. Iran has spent a lot of money developing its Chabahar port, which is just 100 miles from Gwadar port of Pakistan. Gwadar port was built by China. Iran does not want Gwadar to become prominent and Chabahar to be sidelined, especially since Iran is isolated in the world at the moment. Iran has huge reserves of gas and it would like India to gain access to these reserves since India is its ally and Iran-India friendship will grow if India can gain access to Iranian gas reserves. Iran would also like trade with India to increase in future.
TAPI: Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India
IPI: Iran, Pakistan, India
India
India is Pakistan arch enemy, first of all India has never accepted Pakistan as an independent sovereign nation. India was directly responsible for breakup of East Pakistan and formation of Bangladesh. India and Pakistan have fought three wars with each other. India is at the moment chief regional ally of US, and NATO. India believes that Pakistan is at the brink of break up and India must focus on building its relationship with Central Asia, Iran, and Afghanistan, and capture oil and gas reserves from Central Asia and Iran, through Afghanistan and Pakistan. India also believes that an independent Baluchistan will likely become a proxy of Iran, India and Afghanistan. Capt (r) Bharat Verma of Indian Defense Review, writes,
“That New Delhi is its own enemy became obvious, when it permitted the creation of a pure Islamic State on its borders. This nation-state contradicts every democratic and multi-cultural value dear to India. Therefore, if New Delhi has not slept a wink since the creation of Pakistan, it has no one except itself to blame! Many conveniently propose the myth that a stable Pakistan is in India’s interest. This is a false proposition. The truth is that Pakistan is bad news for the Indian Union since 1947-stable or otherwise. With Pakistan on the brink of collapse due to massive internal as well as international contradictions, it is matter of time before it ceases to exist. Multiple benefits will accrue to the Union of India on such demise.”
Verma Continues …
“If ever the national interests are defined with clarity and prioritized, the foremost threat to the Union (and for centuries before) materialized on the western periphery, continuously. To defend this key threat to the Union, New Delhi should extend its influence through export of both, soft and hard power towards Central Asia from where invasions have been mounted over centuries. Cessation of Pakistan as a state facilitates furtherance of this pivotal national objective.
“The self-destructive path that Islamabad chose will either splinter the state into many parts or it will wither away-a case of natural progression to its logical conclusion. In either case Baluchistan will achieve independence. For New Delhi this opens a window of opportunity to ensure that the Gwadar port does not fall into the hands of the Chinese. In this, there is synergy between the political objectives of the Americans and the Indians. Our existing goodwill in Baluchistan requires intelligent leveraging.”
India does not have natural gas reserves, and it desperately needs gas from Iran. But US is against Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline. If IPI project comes through than the stability and security of Iran, Pakistan and India will be in the interest of these respective countries. US would not like this, since it takes away an important leverage from a superpower, that of playing one nation against another. US have proposed the idea of Independent Baluchistan, which India does not mind at all. India has gained strong foot hold inside Afghanistan. A road link connects Iranian port of Chabahar to Afghanistan. India has built a ring-road inside Afghanistan linking Iran to Afghanistan. With back channel diplomacy going on between Iran and US, India and Iran both would like NATO and US supplies to go through Chabahar, Iran rather than Karachi, Pakistan. India strongly believes that Independent Baluchistan is inevitable and is casting all its bets on this deal.
Road link from Iran into Afghanistan
(see checkered line, lower left arrow)
Washington’s interest in Baluchistan
| "It is imperative the Baluchistan, an energy rich province must not come under control of China." |
According to a study titled “Baloch Nationalism and the energy politics of energy resources: the changing context of separatism in Pakistan”, by Robert G.Wirsing, of Strategic Studies Institute, a think tank of U.S army, it is imperative the Baluchistan, an energy rich province must not come under control of China. China built Gwadar port, and would like to expand more trade and energy routes through Pakistan via Baluchistan.
To begin with China is interested in a gas pipeline from Iran through Pakistan’s into Western China. This is something that is not acceptable to US. China could station some of its naval ships at Gwadar in future should the need arise to provide security to its cargo; this is again something that is not acceptable to US. On the list of US agenda is to secure the Indian Ocean and its strategic routes, and Gwadar right at the mouth of Strait of Hormuz is one of those routes. As mentioned before US is using Baluchistan as a base to carry out covert operations against Iran using Jandullah. After 9/11 US is also using an airfield of Pakistan Air force in Baluchistan for its operations in war on terror.
The U.S. is looking into taking direct control of Gwadar, possibly by capturing Gwadar port, so that they can make a land route through Baluchistan into Southern Afghanistan, this will give them an alternate supply route for their troops. Baluchistan must be under US control so that gas pipelines from Central Asia can pump gas through Afghanistan into coast of Baluchistan. The US believes that Balkanization of Pakistan and setup of independent Baluchistan will dismantle the hope of resurgent Pakistan in the near future, paving the way for a dominant Iran taking control of Middle East while India will be able to take control of South Asia including Afghanistan. Brzezinski believes that Iran not Arab world is the natural ally of US in the Middle East. The current US government is using the foreign policy ideals of Brzezinski, which calls for using Islamic militant and Iran against China and Russia.
Conclusion
Current Pakistani government is not able to safeguard Pakistan’s national interests. When Zardari3became president he authorized release of many BLA terrorist who were held up by security forces in detention. BLA has gotten ample time to regroup and re-arm during the last few months. It is very interesting that the current Chief Minister of Baluchistan, Nawab Aslam Raisani before becoming CM, said in an interview, "We will not go for any type of compromise," says Nawab Raisani. "We want total autonomy."
According to author of bestselling book, ‘The Way of the World’, Ron Suskind, Raisani is on the payroll of top western intelligence agencies. Given the level of US penetration in Pakistan’s domestic politics it is no surprise.
The solution of Baluchistan lies with a strong government in Islamabad that is a nationalist government and not a puppet of IMF/WB/CIA. There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that BLA does not represent the aggrieved Baloch people. BLA is a terrorist outfit and it must be dealt with accordingly. We need to get rid of this government that is working nothing like a democracy. Key decisions are taken by either Zardari or his important Washington approved advisors. We need a new setup of nationalist that are willing to stand up to US and make independent policy decision in the best interest of Pakistan. To counter the growing influence of India, Iran and US in Baluchistan it is a must that old contracts with China be renewed and new development projects must be initiated with Chinese help. The local population of Baluchistan must be given more shares in jobs and resources. This is only achievable if we have patriots in the provincial government of Baluchistan, not scoundrels who are abusing patriotism for their personal greed.
The problem for US is that BLA alone is not able to break away Baluchistan from Pakistan. Of the 5% population of Baluchistan they don’t even have support of 10% Balochi population. The Pakistan Army and ISI are resisting the assault in national and strategic interests of Pakistan. The Great Game of Brzezinski will surely continue in Baluchistan and rest of Pakistan, the people of Pakistan are ready to counter this great game now we need leadership and some courage. It will take some time to achieve courage and leadership but it will come eventually. Street revolutions are easy to carry out the hard part is the mental revolution. That is what is required right now to challenge the US global hegemony.
Glossary of Terms and people mentioned
1. Pervaiz Musharraf is former dictator-turned- president of Pakistan. He was forced out of office due to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and his loss of support by his former sponsor, the U.S. government.
2. The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) is the ruling political party under President Zardari.
3. Asif Ali Zardari is the current president of Pakistan. He is the former husband of Benazir Bhutto and came into power on her coat tails after she was assassinated. He is also the son of veteran politician Mr. Hakim Ali Zardari. Mr. Zardari is commonly known in Pakistan as "Mr. Ten Percent" due to his well-known cuts on various government deals.
4. BLA is Baloch Liberation Army, officially declared a terrorist outfit by Pakistan, US and UK. Is responsible for various terrorist activities in Pakistan that includes killing civilians, security forces, and blowing up natural gas pipelines.
5. Nawab Akbar Bugti was former head of the Bugti tribe of balochistan, also 13th governor of Baluchistan and the 5th Chief Minister of the province. He and his family favored creation of Pakistan. Bugti was killed on Aug 26th 2006 in a military operation when he was surrounded in a remote hill in Baluchistan.
6. Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is the main anti-government party in Pakistan at the moment. Because the TTP bears the name "Taliban" the western media often confuses them with the Taliban in Afghanistan. This is a grave mistake. The Afgan Taliban rejects the TTP. The TTP views the ANP to be pro-US and part of the pro-US Pakistan government. The TTP is a group based on Takfiri ideology (a Muslim who believes that all other Muslims, even orthodox Muslims are not true Muslims. They view all others as collaborators with the West. All Muslim scholars are unanimous in declaring Takfiris ‘heretics of Islam
Maps taken from Strategic Studies Institute Report on Baluchistan.
by Michel Chossudovsky | |
 | |
Global Research, April 17, 2009 Author's note:
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) . 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. | |
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
AP
Mar. 30: Pakistani police officers carry their injured colleague to an armored car on the outskirts of Lahore.
DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan — The commander of the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility Tuesday for a deadly assault on a Pakistani police academy and said the group was planning a terrorist attack on the White House that would "amaze" the world.
Baitullah Mehsud, who has a $5 million bounty on his head from the U.S., said Monday's attack on the outskirts of the eastern city of Lahore was retaliation for U.S. missile strikes against militants along the Afghan border.
"Soon we will launch an attack in Washington that will amaze everyone in the world," Mehsud told The Associated Press by phone. He provided no details.
Mehsud has never been directly linked to any attacks outside Pakistan, but attacks blamed on his network of fighters have widened in scope and ambition in recent years. The threat comes days after President Barack Obama warned that Al Qaeda is actively planning attacks on the United States from secret havens in Pakistan.
View photos from the attack on Pakistan police academy
Pakistan's former government and the CIA named Mehsud as the prime suspect behind the December 2007 killing of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Pakistani officials accuse him of harboring foreign fighters, including Central Asians linked to Al Qaeda, and of training suicide bombers.
In his latest comments, Mehsud identified the White House as one of the targets in an interview with local Dewa Radio, a copy of which was obtained by the AP.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid said he had not seen any reports of Mehsud's comments but that he would "take the threat under consideration."
Mehsud also claimed responsibility for a suicide car bombing that killed four soldiers Monday in Bannu district and a suicide attack targeting a police station in Islamabad last week that killed one officer.
Such attacks pose a major test for the weak, year-old civilian administration of Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari that has been gripped with political turmoil in recent weeks.
An Interior Ministry spokesman said it was too early to respond to Mehsud's claim, but the Interior Ministry chief said Monday that authorities had information linking the attack to Mehsud. He said at least one of the attackers arrived in Lahore about 15 days ago from Mehsud's stronghold of South Waziristan near the border with Pakistan and rented a house.
The gunmen who attacked the police academy killed seven police and two civilians, holding security forces at bay for about eight hours before being overpowered by Pakistani commandos. Some of the attackers wore police uniforms, and they took hostages and tossed grenades during the assault.
Earlier Tuesday, a spokesman from a little-known militant group linked to the Pakistani Taliban also claimed responsibility for the attack and a similar ambush-style attack against the Sri Lankan cricket team earlier this month in Lahore. It was not immediately possible to reconcile the two claims.
Omar Farooq, who said he is the spokesman for Fedayeen al-Islam, said the group would carry out more attacks unless Pakistani troops withdraw from tribal areas near the Afghan border and the U.S. stops its drone strikes. The group previously said it was behind the deadly September bombing of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad that killed 54 people.
Mehsud declined to comment on Fedayeen al-Islam's claim that it carried out the attack or to say whether the group is linked to his own. The Pakistani Taliban leader also said he was not deterred by the U.S. bounty on his head: "I wish to die and embrace martyrdom."
The AP has spoken to Mehsud several times in the past and recognized his voice, and a request for an interview with Mehsud was submitted through his aide. The militant leader also granted phone interviews to other media organizations.
The Pakistani Taliban has links with Al Qaeda and Afghan Taliban militants who have launched attacks against U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan from a base in the border region between the two countries.
Pakistan faces tremendous U.S. pressure to eradicate militants from its soil and has launched several military operations in the Afghan border region.
The U.S. has stepped up drone attacks against militants in the area, causing tension with Pakistani officials who protest they are a violation of the country's sovereignty and kill innocent civilians.
Monday's highly coordinated attack highlighted that militants in the country pose a threat far outside the border region. It prompted Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik, Pakistan's top civilian security official, to say that militant groups were "destabilizing the country."
After gunmen stormed the academy, masses of security forces surrounded the compound, exchanging fire in televised scenes reminiscent of the militant siege in the Indian city of Mumbai in November and the attack on Sri Lanka's cricket team.
Officials Tuesday were still trying to sort out how many attackers were involved, giving varying accounts to the media.
A senior Lahore police investigator, Zulfikar Hameed, told the AP that three of the attackers blew themselves up when commandos retook the police academy and one was shot by security forces. Hameed said it was difficult to say precisely how many militants carried out the attack and some may have escaped.
Tasneem Qureshi, a top official at the Interior Ministry, told an Express News TV that four attackers were in custody and "one, who was wounded, managed to escape."
Punjab police chief, Khawaja Khalid Farooq, said one of the captured militants had provided useful information and that about 50 other people in Lahore were detained overnight for questioning.
Posts
All Comments
