The Real Target Is Nuclear Pakistan, Not Osama
America is not a victim: It has showered tons of gunpowder on innocent people in the world
Prof. Hafiz Muhammad Saeed
In the past, Pakistan has been a supporter of freedom movements and all the people in general and oppressed Muslims in particular used to look toward it for its political and moral help to their cause. When Poland was under communist rule, Polish citizens used to say that had Pakistan been in their neighbourhood, they could have achieved liberty like Afghanistan. But the present government's decision of cooperating with the United States and offering its airspace and military installations besides intelligence network to it for attack on Afghanistan has perturbed the Muslims across the world. The most disturbing fact is that the government seemed unaware of the ill-effects of its decision on the geo-political situation in the region.
It is not apprehending that the decision, which was taken under duress as was admitted by one of its ministers at a ceremony in Lahore, would put nuclear installations of the country at risk, though the government has claimed that the decision was taken to protect these installations. One is at loss to understand that when the government was feeling it difficult to protect its nuclear plants from the US armed forces deployed in the waters of the Arabian Sea, how it could be able to save them from American air attacks when these aircrafts would be placed just one hundred miles away in Peshawar.
The government must understand that America wants to occupy Pakistan under the cover of an operation against Osama bin Laden, and Pakistan should not allow such a move. By permitting America to use our airspace and land, Pakistan would lose its sovereignty and honour. The nation should unite at this juncture and stop the rulers from taking such a suicidal decision.
Moreover, it is absolutely incorrect to consider the US as a victim of terrorism. America itself is a terrorist state. It had rained tons of gunpowder in different parts of the world unjustifiably recently. It was America which had attacked two cities of Japan with atomic bombs, killing hundreds of thousands of people in one go. Who can forget the massacre of millions of Iraqis by US-led forces? Can it be taken as an innocent nation? It is high time for the US too to review its policies. America should give up its designs of establishing its supremacy over the world, abandon its policy of pressurizing and exploiting small nations.
We believe that the real issue before the US was not Osama. It actually wanted to crush Jihad in this region. The Zionists and the Hindus were perturbed over the resurgence of Islam through Jihad and considered it a great threat for themselves. America actually wanted to check Jihad through its present moves. It had previously occupied the Gulf on the pretext of containing Saddam and now it aimed at capturing Pakistan through false propaganda against Osama and the Taliban.
The Hindu-Zionist lobby has convinced America that if it fails to check the nuclear Pakistan, it will soon be leading the entire Muslim world. The US is, therefore, out to occupy Pakistan on the pretext of having been a victim of terrorism. The Pakistani nation to rise to the occasion, demonstrate unity on this issue and stop the rulers from taking a decision contrary to the national sovereignty and solidarity which was gravely threatened at present. There was no logic in the argument that the US be allowed the use of our land and air space to safeguard our solidarity. National sovereignty could not be protected in this way. Such a decision was against the Islamic interest. And with this, we would lose both our independence and honour, while our nuclear installations would also be insecure. The entry of American forces would facilitate Israeli and Indian attacks on our soil. Pakistan should keep off from the Osama issue. The sole responsibility of the Pakistan government was to defend not only this country but Muslims all over the world as well. As Pakistan came into being in the name of Allah.
We also urge upon the Muslim world to unite and realize that the target of the enemy was not any particular area or country, their real worry was the spirit of Jihad among the Muslims. Islamism and the Islamic strength were being painted as terrorism.
Iran's silence in the present turbulent situation was also very disturbing. It was not comprehending that America was pursuing a policy of grabbing Muslim states one by one and instead of falling prey to the US designs, the Ummah should be prepared to face the challenge. However, we are confident that the US would not succeed in realizing this goal. Even if America attempts to check the resurgence of Islam in this region, it would be counter productive. If the US imposed a war, the Muslims would be victorious.
We warn the United States that it should also refrain from attacking Afghanistan as it would trigger another world war. The US should not play in the hands of the Zionists who want a bloody confrontation between the Christians and the Muslims in South East Asia to weaken the world's two major religions. The Muslims did not want war. If, however, the US unleashed the war, the situation would go out of its hand. The US which was presently mourning the devastation of the World Trade Centre, would have to mourn much bigger losses.
The guideline given by Allah to the Muslims in such situations is enshrined in the verse given below:
"O ye who believe! take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors; they are but friends and protectors to each other. And he amongst you that turns to them (for friendship) is of them. Verily Allah guideth not a people unjust."
Those in whose hearts is a disease, thou seest how eagerly they run about amongst them, saying: "We do fear lest a change of fortune bring us disaster." Ah! Perhaps Allah will give (thee) victory, or a decision according to His Will. Then will they repent of the thoughts which they secretly harboured in their hearts.
Tiny bundle is first of Afghan victims
The tiny bundle looked so vulnerable huddled on the dirty adult-sized bed in the Al-Hajeri Al-Khidmat hospital in Quetta yesterday, writes Miriam Donohoe
Hamid Ullah, just 12 months old, is the first of an expected wave of civilian war-wounded arriving in Pakistan for treatment from conflict-torn Afghanistan.
The baby is one of five people who survived a bombing attack which obliterated his small village near the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar last Sunday. The blast reportedly killed 22 members of Hamid's extended family, including his four brothers and sisters.
The wounded were having their simple evening meal in their mud-brick homes in Tarin Kannt when the bombs came at around 8 p.m.
The patients have burns, shrapnel injuries and broken bones, all consistent with bomb blasts. One is suffering from trauma and has not spoken since Sunday.
The arrival of the five, and the story they told yesterday, are among the first verifiable evidence that civilians are being hit by the nightly United States bombing campaign.
They endured a 10-hour ambulance journey on rough roads to get to Pakistan after receiving two days of care in an overcrowded clinic in Spinbaldak.
The ruling Taliban are claiming that the number of wounded in the US-led airstrikes, which began almost three weeks ago, is running into thousands.
The Pentagon insists on a daily basis that civilians are never deliberately targeted and points out that they are in a war situation.
The treatment available in this hospital in Quetta is not sophisticated but is far ahead of what is available in Afghanistan. None of the patients was hooked up to intravenous drips.
The beds were covered in filthy stained sheets and the wards reeked of urine. Flies were everywhere.
The family claim that no one in the village was a Taliban supporter, and that all of the 22 killed were innocent civilians.
Pakistani authorities are trying to ensure that the wounded from the conflict receive only initial emergency care here, but return to Afghanistan as soon as they are well enough.
Pakistan is in danger of falling apart
Regional separatism and support for Islamist groups are growing
William Dalrymple
Tuesday October 23, 2001
The Guardian
A couple of years ago, on a visit to the North West Frontier, I called in on Khan Abdul Wali Khan. The Khan had once been one of the Pathan's great leaders; but he was now a frail old man. We sat in his summer house in the middle of his irrigated garden. The Khan poured jasmine tea and asked me about my impressions of the area. I told him what I had just seen at the nearby Darra arms bazaar: hundreds of men busy manufacturing home-made assault rifles and anti-aircraft cannon.
"Yes," said the Khan. "There are now more than one million Kalashnikovs in this province alone. It has got completely out of control." He shook his head sadly. "I feel," he said, "as if I'm living on an ammunition dump."
I thought of the Khan this week as anti-American protests spread across Pakistan. Although there has been unrest in Karachi and a bomb in Rawalpindi, it is among the Pathans that the rioting has been most serious: a cinema, the UN compound and a bazaar burned down by Pathans in Quetta, and four more shot dead in a village nearby; significantly, the local Baluchis have played virtually no part in the riots. Worse still on the frontier, where the Pathans are from the same tribes as their cousins in the Taliban, Peshawar has disappeared into a miasma of tear gas and police shooting, with at least half a dozen dead.
Machismo is to the North West Frontier what religion is to the Vatican. Bandoliers hang over the men's shoulders; grenades are nonchalantly tucked into their pockets. I once walked into a Khyber tea house to find a group of Pathan mojahedin huddled in a corner dismantling a live landmine with a broken screw driver. None of the other tea drinkers blinked.
The Pathans have never been completely conquered, at least not since the time of Alexander the Great. They have seen off centuries of invaders, and they retain the mixture of self-confidence, independence and suspicion that this has produced. Beyond the checkpoints on the edge of Peshawar, tribal law - based on the tribal council and the blood feud - rules unchallenged. The dominant Afridi tribe controls the Afghan heroin trade and kidnapping and murder are virtually cottage industries.
It takes very little for latent discontent of the Pathans with the Pakistani government to erupt, but this latest wave of riots is on a different scale to anything since partition, raising the perennial question as to the future of Pakistan - can the centre hold?
If many in Pakistan now question the long-term viability of the state, it is certain that none would be so ready to separate themselves from it as the Pathans. Throughout the 1940s, Wali Khan's father, known as Padshah Khan, passionately opposed the creation of Pakistan, leading the Pathans to side with Gandhi's Congress against Jinnah's Muslim League. During this period the Pathans believed that they would gain their own state, allied to India, just as East Pakistan - modern Bangladesh - was originally separated by thousands of miles from its western wing.
In the bloodshed of partition, this Pakhtun state never happened, but the dashed hopes left the Pathans estranged from the idea of Pakistan. Padshah Khan spent the 1960s and 1970s struggling in vain for a union with the equally disgruntled Pathans in Afghanistan to form a new state - Pakhtunistan, straddling the Durand Line (the hated frontier drawn up by the British in 1893 which broke the tribes in two). But the Pakhtun nationalist spirit survived his death in 1988, and has mutated into a very different Islamist form under a variety of Taliban-like groups such as the Jamiat Ulema i-Islam (JUI). If, as seems quite possible, Afghanistan breaks up in the aftermath of the American assault, with the Tajik Northern Alliance controlling the north, and a Pathan post-Taliban successor state taking the south, then demands for the creation of Pakhtunistan can only gain momentum.
Regional separatism is only one of the problems now faced by Pakistan. President Musharraf's decision to support the American assault on the Taliban, against the wishes of more than 80% of his population, has greatly strengthened Islamist groups, bringing them support from swathes of the population not normally part of their constituency.
Serious civilian casualties in Afghanistan or heavy-handed action by the Pakistani security forces would further radicalise the population. Last week Musharraf sacked two leading pro-Taliban generals and placed three pro-Taliban religious leaders (including the spiritual leader of the JUI) under house arrest; but after a decade of Talibanisation, Pakistan has never been closer to an Islamic revolution, or at least an Islamist coup. Such a coup would put nuclear weapons into Islamist hands: Bin Laden's wildest dream. These strains and tensions within Pakistan can only increase in the months ahead. It is likely to be a bumpy ride.
The United States is now laying the foundations of a long-term autocracy in Pakistan
Robert Fisk: Farewell to democracy in Pakistan
'Far better to have a Mubarak or King Fahd than let Muslims vote for a real government that might oppose US policies'
26 October 2001
Armoured warfare schools, signals headquarters, artillery ranges, military museums, cavalry lines, infantry battalion compounds... every few hundred yards in every city, you come across them. Driving around Pakistan is like touring a barracks.
Cross the Indus river at Attock and the thump of shellfire changes the air pressure as General Pervez Musharraf's tanks move down the range. Along the roadsides are artillery pieces dating back to the Raj, 45-pounders and French armour and old Sherman tanks on concrete plinths to remind Pakistanis of their heroic martial past.
Their national defence journal carries stirring tales by former chiefs of staff and extracts from the 1962 war diaries of the East Pakistan Rifles. And this is supposed to be a nation threatened with Islamic revolution?
It's an odd phenomenon, but there are times when the West seems to be more worried about the "Islamisation'' of Pakistan than Pakistanis are themselves. For has a military dictatorship ever been more blessed than that of General Musharraf? General Zia-ul-Haq was held in contempt by the West when he hanged prime minister Bhutto - but he was elevated to ally and friend the moment that we needed his help in the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan. However, by 1993 Pakistan was almost declared a "state sponsor of terrorism'' by the United States because of its support for Kashmiri Muslim guerrillas.
When President Clinton arrived in the subcontinent last year, he paid a state visit to India but gave General Musharraf - who had still to declare himself president - only a few hours, favouring Pakistan with a one-day return trip, a lecture on the evils of Osama bin Laden and an appeal to General Musharraf not to hang the prime minister, Nawaz Sharif.
Nor can General Musharraf have been too pleased with Colin Powell's ode to liberty last January. "There should be no question in any world leader's mind that the most essential ingredient for success in this 21st century is a free people and a government that derives its right to govern from the consent of such people,'' the US Secretary of State announced: "...America stands ready to help any country that wishes to join the democratic world.''
Then came 11 September and General Powell produced a new song sheet. "President Bush,'' he told us on 16 October, "asked me... to demonstrate our enduring commitment to our relationship with Pakistan... we are also looking forward to strengthening our co-operation on a full range of bilateral and regional issues... we're truly at the beginning of a strengthened relationship, a relationship that will grow and thrive in the months and years ahead.'' All of which just goes to show what the loan of a few air bases and the arrest of a few government-sponsored Islamists can do. General Musharraf had taken "bold and courageous action" against "international terrorism".
And in the blinking of an eye, there was General Powell promising to take up the Kashmir dispute with India - the very nation that almost persuaded America's State Department to put Pakistan on its "terrorism" list in 1992. Newsweek outlined the US government's view with alarming, if unconscious, frankness. "It may be a good thing that Pakistan is ruled by a friendly military dictator,'' the magazine concluded, "rather than what could well be a hostile democracy.''
This, of course, is the very policy that dictates Washington's relations with the Arab world. Far better to have a Mubarak or a King Abdullah or a King Fahd running the show than to let the Arabs vote for a real government that might oppose US policies in the region.
Corrupt, lawless, drug-ridden, and inherently unstable Pakistan may be, but General Musharraf allows a kind of freedom of speech to continue. Anyone used to the arid wastes of Arab journalism can only be surprised by the debate in the Pakistani press, the often violent anti-Musharraf views expressed in the letters pages and the columnists who argue forcefully for a return to democracy. If General Musharraf has to allow Islamists their freedom to "let off steam'' - as Pakistanis like to say – then he has to give equal space to the democrats.
Aqil Shah put it very well when he wrote in Lahore's Friday Times last week that, by allying himself with America's "War on Terror'', General Musharraf had secured de facto international acceptance for his 1999 coup. Suddenly, all he had wished for - the lifting of sanctions, massive funding for Pakistan's crumbling industry, IMF loans, a $375m (£263m) debt rescheduling and humanitarian aid - has been given him.
While General Powell mutters a few words about political freedom - and none at all about Pakistan's nuclear tests - we hear no more of General Musharraf's widely publicised "roadmap'' to democracy.
The problem, as Mr Shah points out, is that future peace and stability requires sustained investment in solid secular democracies - not in stable dictatorships. Yet the United States is now laying the foundations of a long-term autocracy in Pakistan, a dictatorship not unlike those that lie like a cancer across the Middle East.
The United States likes to call this a "strategic engagement'' and is already, in its embassy's private press briefings, reminding journalists of the corruption that smeared the democratically elected Sharif government. Far better, surely, to have an honest, down-to-earth, clean military man in charge.
Of course, we must forget that it was Pakistan's Interservices Intelligence (ISI) outfits - the highest ranks of the country's security agencies - that set up the Taliban, funnelled weapons into Afghanistan and grew rich on the narcotics trade. Ever since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the ISI has worked alongside the CIA, funding the mullahs and maulawis now condemned as the architects of "world terror''.
Most Pakistanis now realise that the ISI - sanctioned by Washington rather than Pakistan's own rulers - turned into a well-armed and dangerous mafia, and while money was poured into its smuggling activities, Pakistan's people lacked education, security and a health service. No wonder they turned to Islam and the madrassa schools for food and teaching.
But will anything really change? Pakistan's military is now more important than ever, an iron hand to maintain order within the state while its superpower ally bombs the ruins of Afghanistan. Driving past all those compounds and cavalry lines and barrack squares in Pakistan, one can only be shocked by the profound social division they represent.
Outside in the street, Afghan refugees and Pakistan's urban poor root through garbage tips and crowd on to soot-pumping buses to work in sweatshops and brick factories. Inside, behind the ancient, newly painted cannons and battalion flags, rose bushes surround well-tended lawns and officers' messes decorated with polished brass fittings.
No rubbish litters this perfect world of discipline. Why should anyone living here want a return to corrupt democracy? Especially when America is their friend.
A fog of uncertainty
Too many questions, not enough answers
Leader
Friday October 26, 2001
The Guardian
With increasingly contradictory signals coming from Washington and London about the conduct and aims of the war in Afghanistan here are a number of pressing questions:
Military action
The primary objective (and justification) of military action is said to be the capture of Osama bin Laden. Mr Bush has ordered the CIA to kill him if it can. Mr Blair does not envisage putting him on trial. Donald Rumsfeld now suggests he may never be found. After all that has occurred, are the US and Britain any closer to catching Bin Laden? Do they have any better an idea where he really is? And do they really want to catch him? Is killing him the best way of ensuring justice for the September 11 victims and of upholding international law?
· If Bin Laden is the objective, why has military action so far focused on the Taliban, whose overthrow is not a stated war aim? Despite their alliance with al-Qaida, is it sensible to persist in widening the war into a possibly unwinnable campaign of national conquest?
· It is not disputed that high-altitude bombing and missiles have caused many civilian casualties. But it is not forgotten that precise and proportionate attacks were promised. Three weeks into a supposedly "new kind of war", is it still appropriate to be using such tactics?
· The MoD estimates that in Kosovo 60% of cluster bombs missed their target or remained unaccounted for. The Red Cross has asked for them to be banned. Is their present use justifiable?
· Why, when it is agreed that the war will ultimately be won on the ground and air superiority has been attained, have special forces still not been deployed in any effective numbers?
· What evidence is there that Bin Laden possesses either chemical or biological weapons? Is Washington preparing to use suspicions linking him to anthrax outbreaks as a pretext to attack Iraq? Does it intend to hit other countries or groups? Would the British government support such action?
· Who is really calling the shots? Is it President Bush? Is it the Pentagon, or Dick Cheney, operating from his "secure location? What influence does Mr Blair have on the overall conduct of the war?
· Is it the intention to continue military offensives during Ramadan, which starts on November 17? And what kind of military campaign is sustainable once winter sets in in earnest?
· What has the bombing achieved so far?
· What are the military arguments against pausing the bombing while stepping up humanitarian aid?
Diplomacy and aid
· Is it envisaged that any eventual diplomatic settlement would involve the Taliban? Colin Powell and Robin Cook suggest it is. If such voices are ignored, will not prolonged instability in Afghanistan and in Pakistan be the certain result?
· Plans are apparently afoot to place post-war Afghanistan into a sort of UN receivership. Does the UN yet have a blueprint for how that is going to work? And where are the volunteers for the mooted Islamic UN peacekeeping force?
· When it comes to a new government, Pakistan is backing the Pashtun "king" and Taliban "moderates". Go-it-alone Pashtun and Hazara tribal warlords are backing themselves. Russia backs the Northern Alliance, which backs "president" Burhanuddin Rabbani. What formula do the US and Britain favour?
· Not nearly enough food is being trucked into Afghanistan ahead of the winter. How can food deliveries be increased in the next four weeks? Given Pakistan's reluctance to open its borders or agree to UN camps, how can the plight of those trying to flee the war be eased?
· What are the internal plans to distribute food within Afghanistan? Are the plans compatible with a continued bombing campaign?
Clausewitz famously observed: "Three-quarters of the factors on which action is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or less uncertainty." Nobody could be expected to answer all these questions now. But the war in Afghanistan and the broader "war on terrorism" are being fought in the name of democray, which flourishes where there is popular consultation and consent. But consultation is only worthwhile if it is candid, open-minded, and continuous. Consent is only legitimate if it is informed. Thus Mr Blair is right to warn of the risk of British casualties, as he did yesterday, if he believes that to be a likely result of his policy. But he is wrong if he believes that by admitting this possibility, he is absolved from an ongoing responsibility to explain why such sacrifices are necessary and why, in his view, there is no alternative now or in the forseeable future.
As we have noted on more than one occasion since September 11, the government is asking the British people to take an awful lot on trust. Too much is hidden behind a cloak of operational security. Too little of what is being decided is open to parliamentary scrutiny. Not enough unspun information is shared with a media already seriously hamstrung by the inaccessibility of most of Afghanistan.
The gap between what is certain public knowledge and what are merely assertions and private assumptions made by the government and the military is expanding by the day. This gulf, if it continues to widen, will become too great to bridge. In short, it is becoming more and more difficult for ordinary people to judge whether this conflict is being waged wisely or well, or by the best available means. The fuller the answers to these, and other questions, the better the chances of retaining the necessary trust of the people.