The mosque siege reveals Musharraf's desperation to appear tough in the war on terror. But in truth he is a friend to terrorists
Over recent days, news from Pakistan has been dominated by the siege at the Red Mosque, which ended late yesterday. Scarcely a mile from the seat of power in Islamabad, the madrasa students and their two leading clerics inside the mosque first claimed attention with kidnappings, threats of suicide bombings and demands for the imposition of sharia law. The Musharraf regime mounted a military operation against the militants which led to the loss of numerous lives, among them one of the clerics, Abdul Rashid Ghaz.
A number of questions arise. Why was action not taken immediately? How were militants and arms able to get in under the gaze of the police and intelligence services? And why were other measures, including shutting off electricity at the mosque, not exhausted earlier?
The episode appears to have been drawn out deliberately by President Musharraf. Since he sacked the chief justice in March, a movement led by lawyers, journalists and opposition parties has been clamouring for democracy on Pakistan's streets. As Musharraf faces his biggest crisis, he is desperate to prove his indispensability to the west in the war on terror.
But this use of force is likely to produce unintended and dangerous consequences, as it has in Baluchistan, Waziristan and Bajaur. It may be salutary to recall how Indira Gandhi's order for troops to attack the Golden Temple, where Sikh militants were holed up, not only failed to subdue the militants but triggered a wave of violence, including her assassination. While few Sikhs may have sympathised with the militants, many came to deeply resent the government's high-handedness.
Suicide bombing and other noxious forms of terrorism were once alien to Pakistan. After eight years of military dictatorship, radicalism and fundamentalism are in the ascendant everywhere. Musharraf is perceived among radical elements as the west's instrument in a "war on Islam" - there could be no greater failure in the battle for hearts and minds.
Terrorism requires a political solution. Extremists can be marginalised through debate and political dialogue in a democracy. Military dictatorship, as we are now seeing, only exacerbates the problem. It has become obvious to every Pakistani that, far from presiding over a transition to genuine democracy in the country, Musharraf is intent on dismantling every democratic institution in his way. Over recent months he has assaulted the judiciary, restricted freedom of the press, and put hundreds of members of the opposition behind bars.
The roots of the most shocking incident so far, however, can be found in north London, where the chairman of the Musharraf-allied Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), Altaf Hussain, resides. When Pakistan's chief justice decided to address the bar in Karachi, a vast welcome was expected in the city. This worried Musharraf and his MQM allies, who control the Sindh government - and especially Karachi, the provincial capital. They decided to organise a rival rally the same day, despite protests by the opposition. What followed on the blood-soaked May 12 could be described in two words: state terrorism.
While the police stood aside, the terrorist arm of the MQM sprayed bullets into a peaceful procession of the opposition parties. Some 48 people lost their lives and 200 sustained bullet wounds. Among them were 10 members of my party. Most callously, Musharraf later that evening triumphantly claimed that the people had shown their "force". None of the opposition parties believe MQM's denials that they were involved in turning this peaceful protest violent. It was then I decided to launch legal proceedings against Altaf Hussain, who has been living in exile in London since 1992 and became a British citizen in 1999.
The MQM came into existence in the mid-1980s as a genuine people's movement in Karachi, representing the immigrant community that had arrived from India shortly after the creation of Pakistan. This community had serious grievances, the most significant being that educated young muhajirs could not get jobs because of imposed quotas. But within a few years it had degenerated into a thuggish mafia outfit, controlled by one man, Altaf Hussain.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and even the US state department and the European Union have issued reports about the MQM's terrorist activities. The only independent provincial assembly in Pakistan recently denounced the party as a "terrorist organisation", and last weekend the conference of opposition parties jointly resolved to support the legal proceedings against Hussain.
While Musharraf maintains that he is at the frontline of the war on terror - in which thousands of Pakistani soldiers and citizens have lost their lives - he has allied himself with the country's number one terrorist. And Tony Blair's government, which was at the fore of this war, gave Pakistan's number one terrorist citizenship.
It is impossible to embark on any quest for the hearts and minds of Pakistanis when these blatant double standards exist. Are dictators somehow fine when they exist to serve US interests, even if they destroy hopes of democracy in the process? And are terrorists only a problem when it is western blood that is shed?
� Imran Khan is the leader of the Pakistan Movement for Justice and a member of parliament
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`We have come to such a pass, that it is the first duty of intelligent men to restate the obvious' - George Orwell
Adam26banzGhaznavi's Response:After USA fell of the gold standard in 1971, Kissinger brokered a secret deal in 1973 with the Saudis (as swing producer able to flood the market & destroy any state defying their policy) that ALL oil be sold in $. THIS preserved the $ status s global reserve currency & gave the USA an unlimited credit card, enabling it to pass off the costs of its institutionalised hyperinflation ($9Trillion nat debt, $60Trillion accumalated other liabilities as per brookings institute estimates & the $370Trillion derivatives pyrmaid) onto other states just by PRINTING $ & fund the army required to protect the petrodollar (costing more than the rest of the planet's put together) via the same printing press. THIS is how the cold war was �won�, by bankrupting the USSR, by bankrupting the world.p>
But to cover their flank against the threat of leftist or fascist convergence on Meccap>
(the greatest geo cultural vortex in the world - Eg the vatican is only the centre of Catholicism & as Jerusalem is contestd by Islam & Judaism; & even the Holy Spulchre is administered by Muslims to prevent general war between the great Christian denominations & their state backers there is NO remotely comparable geo cultural vortex in the Christian world)
The Saudi Princelings needed to pay danegeld to Jihadis to make trouble elsewhere (to preserve control of the brand) especially Pakistan - used as the jumping off point for Zbigniew Brzezinski's strategy of backing Islamic fascists in Afghanistan to draw the USSR into invading out of fear of their centralAsian missiile bases being over-run (this includes support for Osama Bin Laden
(see picture of Zbigniew Brzezinski giving fatherly support to Osama Bin Laden - scroll down to bottom of link to view picture)
So Pakistan (no sceptered isle, but a land cursed by political geography, with much more powerful neighbour to its east & the ultimate geo historic vortex to its northwest meaning it was predestined that the army would play a top heavy role in the nation's political economy) was further burdened by 5 million heavily armed Afghan refugees & their narco political economy after the USSR had been bled white & collapsed vis the (aforementioned) Petrodollar propelled arms race.
s if this was not bad enough, pre Sept 11th, the USA petrodollar regime was/ is desperate to prop up its uttrely worthless fiat currency's global reserve status (insuring it remains negotiable) by insuring that the oil/ gas of Central Asia is sold in $ (as well as that of the mideast). Hence the arc of USA bases there (as well as those planned for Iraq).
Hence Leila Helms (neice of ex CIA chief Richard Helms) was Taliban PR rep in USA 3 weeks before Sept 11th. http://www.house.gov/mcdermott/pr_gore_vidal.html The Taliban were offered a carpet of gold, if they agreed to defend the pipeline from Central Asia, or a carpet of bombs if they did not.
After Bin Laden got NORAD to stand down from his cave enabling him to demolish 3 steelframed buildings with 2 planes on Sept 11th (the 3rd WTC Building 7 was not even hit by a plane), Richard Armitage threatened Musharraf with nuclear incineration if he did not comply with USA policy in the region (The Taliban having ben offered gold or bombs), Karzai being a former employee of UNACOL.
Since then, Musharraf has found himself in an impossible position; trying to balance between the fallout of the USA imperium's pro Jihadi policy (Petrodollar alliance with Saudi Arabia); & the USA imperium's demands for co-operation with their `war on terror' - especially to help consolidate control of Afghanistan.
Musharraf has 80,000 troops on the Afghan border & is trying to hold the Durrand line in the most difficult inhabited terrain on the planet. The USA imperium has a few hundred & is anxious to BOTH pass the blame onto somebody else...
(via their proxy Karzai who alternates between sying Pakistan is not doing enough on its border & threatening war over Pakistan's adherence to the Durrand line- Karzai is maming irredentist claims to Pakistani Pathan territory)
...for the failure of their military geo political economic policy, the fact that they cannot retain control (Pakistan is an easy scapegoat) AND secure a pretext for war against Iran or even Pakistan (as it cannot hold the line in Iraq or Afghanistan) to prop up its position/ worthless currency through direct nuclear terrorism.
THIS IS the bind in which Musharraf finds his country (my fatherland).
& what of the opposition?
Bhutto advocates the `Orange Revolution' model of Jacob Rothschild/ Boris Berezovsky; & correspondingly greater closeness to the imperium. If Musharraf has difficulty with the Mullahs (empowered by over 3 decades of USA/ Saudi meddling in the region), how will it fare with this supreme opportunist?
Imran `Goldsmith' Khan longs only to hear `Pakistan, Imran Khan!' one last itme before his country is erased from the map. He could only appease the mullahs by giving them everything they want.
Do I even have to mention what the much vaunted Choudary affair is really about?
If Musharraf was more `liberal' towards the Mullahs, which is the issue in the Choudary affair, Pakistan would be even more threatened more immediately by the USA imperium.As he is not, hypocrites, opportunists, enemies of Pakistan, dinner party fascists who discreetly think it no great loss to see Pakistan erased from the map (as a result of mullahs coming to power); decry his lack of constitutionality.
& the USA drunk on debt & war, the blood & oil of others, does not notice or care what it has done to my fatherland, Pakistan; or any other lesser breeds without the law they have no need of pretending any longer to possess themlseves.
So Musharraf is by far the best man, the only man for a fundamentally impossible situation, to keep the country just about together for long enough for the USA petrodollar imperium to collapse of its own accord.
Then after the crash of the petrodollar we can (& must in the west to survive by making it worthwhile for others to help us) establish the Common Ownership of Information (every 3rd world peasant to have access to every book/ piece of technical info ever produced on a wind up wifi laptop fom MIT) in exchange for the oil remaining on long enough to effect the transition to solar powered microgeneration (without the oil the info is lost, without the info the oil is worthless). The consequant substantive sovereignty of the individual can thence be pooled to effect control of their energy based (as gold is inherently deflationary & no one will trust fiat currencies anymore) currencies...
Meyer Rothschild: `Give me control of a nations' currency & I care not who writes its laws'
...every mini powerstation thence becoming in effect a community controlled bank, further breaking the power of fiat currency barons, energy barons & their secureaucratic hoods. In the west or in the east.
But ALL is contingent upon avoiding nuclear war against Iran/ Pakistan. Or else the consequent desensitisation shall cause humanity to resign itself to oblivion without an intellectual or spiritual fight./p> More Info on: The Controlled Demolition of the Petrodollar Imperium: