American Follies in Afghanistan

The killing of 11 Pakistani soldiers by US air strikes last week showed that the American-led war in Afghanistan is relentlessly spreading into Pakistan, one of America’s oldest, most faithful allies.

Pakistan’s military branded the air attack `unprovoked and cowardly.’ However, the unstable government in Islamabad, led by the Pakistan People’s Party(PPP), which depends on large infusions of US aid, later softened its protests. This is in good part because the PPP leader, Asif Zardari, is being shielded from judicial corruption investigations through a quiet deal with President Pervez Musharraf and Washington to thwart reinstatement of Pakistan’s ousted supreme court justices.

The US, which used a B-1 heavy bomber and F-15 strike aircraft in the attacks, called its action, `self-defense.’
What actually happened on the wild Pakistan-Afghanistan border remains murky. But there are reports that US and Pakistani troops engaged in a direct clash and heavy firefight that was ended by the American bombing.

In recent months, US aircraft, Predator hunter-killer drones, US Special Forces and CIA teams have been launching attacks inside Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) along the Afghan border. The Pashtun tribes inhabiting this traditionally autonomous mountain region are ardent supporters of their fellow Afghan Pashtuns who form the core of Taliban and reject the current Afghan-Pakistan border, known as the Durand Line, as an artificial creation of British imperialism – which it undeniably was.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has been openly advocating major ground and air attacks by US forces into Pakistan. American neoconservatives have been denouncing Pakistan as a `rogue state’ and a `sponsor of international terrorism,’ and are calling for US air and missile strikes against Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and reactors.

But instead of intimidating the pro-Taliban Pakistani Pashtun, limited US air strikes flown from secret US bases inside Pakistan have ignited a firestorm of anti-western fury among FATA’s warlike tribesmen and increased their support for Taliban. Pakistanis are united in their opposition to any US strikes into their nation and enraged at the United States for supporting dictator Pervez Musharraf.

The US is emulating Britain’s colonial divide and rule tactics by offering up to $500,000 to local Pashtun tribal leaders to get them to fight pro-Taliban elements, causing more chaos in the already turbulent region, and stoking old tribal rivalries. The US is using this same tactic in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This week’s deadly US attacks pointedly again illustrate the fact that the 60,000 US and NATO ground troops in Afghanistan are incapable of even holding off Taliban and its allies, even though the Afghan resistance has nothing but small arms to battle the west’s high-tech arsenal. Further evidence was supplied by an audacious Taliban raid on Kandahar prison, which liberated 450-500 Taliban prisoners and humiliated Canadian and NATO forces policing the region.

US air power is almost always called in when there are clashes with Taliban or other anti-western forces. In fact, US and NATO infantry’s main function is to draw Taliban into battle so the Afghan mujahidin can be bombed from the air.

Without the round the clock overhead presence of US airpower, which can respond in minutes, western forces in Afghanistan would risk being isolated, cut off from supplies, and defeated. A sizeable portion of NATO manpower in Afghanistan already goes to defending bases and supply depots. However, NATO’s long supply lines that bring in fuel, food, and ammunition across FATA from US-run bases in Pakistan are increasingly under attack. Forty giant fuel tankers were recently destroyed at the Torkham border crossing.

But these deadly air strikes, as we have seen in recent weeks, are blunt instruments. Guerilla wars are all about controlling civilian populations. The US air attacks often kill as many or even more civilians than Taliban fighters. Dead civilians are routinely described away as `suspected Taliban fighters.’

Mighty US B-1 heavy bombers are not going to win the hearts and minds of Afghans. Each bombed village and massacred caravan wins new recruits to Taliban and its allies.

Now, the US and its NATO allies are edging ever closer to open warfare against Pakistan at a time when they are unable to defeat Taliban fighters inside Afghanistan due to lack of combat troops. The outgoing commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, US Gen. Dan McNeill, recently admitted he would need 400,000 soldiers to pacify that nation. The US and NATO have a combined force of around 60,000 troops in Afghanistan.

`We just need to occupy Pakistan’s tribal territory,’ insists the Pentagon, `to stop its Pashtun tribes from supporting and sheltering Taliban, and shut down Taliban bases there.’ US commanders in Vietnam used the same faulty reasoning to justify their counter-productive expansion of the Indochina War into Cambodia.

A US-led invasion of FATA, as urged by Secretary Gates, will simply push pro-Taliban Pashtun militants further into Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier province, drawing over-extended western troops ever deeper into Pakistan and making their supply lines all the more vulnerable. Already overextended western forces will be stretched even thinner and clashes with Pakistan’s tough regular army may become inevitable.

Widening the Afghan War into Pakistan is military stupidity on a grand scale and political madness. It could very well end up a bigger disaster than Iraq. But Washington and its obedient allies seem hell-bent on charging into a wider regional war that no number of heavy bombers will win.

Looking back at Pakistan’s Role in Afghanistan

 —Najmuddin A Shaikh

Let us be clear that the direction of the anti-Soviet jihad was determined by us. We decided after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan not to dismantle the jihadi network and to use it for other purposes. We decided to support the Taliban and thus furthered the spread of extremism in our border areas

In Pakistan, no discussion of what is happening in Afghanistan and by extension in Pakistan is now complete without reference to the American perfidy. This is how it goes.

Pakistan has shown total submission to American demands and is continuing to fight the war the latter has forced upon us. We have disregarded the fact that the Americans have shown little concern for Pakistan’s domestic compulsions and interests and even less appreciation of the sacrifices made by the Pakistani military.

Do the Americans have any genuine interest in Pakistan’s stability or, obsessed with their developing relationship with India, they are quite prepared to see Pakistan, whose leaders and people they distrust, disintegrate?

The distrust goes back in time: today’s situation in Afghanistan and in our tribal areas was created by the Americans who in their desire for vengeance against the Soviet Union were prepared to bring to these parts Islamic extremists from all over the Islamic world. Later, with the Soviets defeated and gone, America abandoned the Afghans and the Pakistanis and left us in this mess. America was involved as much in sustaining the Taliban as Pakistan.

Now, as the thinking goes, perhaps we should recognise that in Afghanistan the Americans have interests other than merely eliminating extremism and the safe havens of the Al Qaeda. They are now engaged in a new version of the “Great Game”, with Afghanistan becoming their base of operations for controlling the Central Asian States and securing the flow of the fossil fuel resources of the area not into Russian pipelines but in other directions that better suit American objectives. We are playing the role of a surrogate.

This view, incidentally, is held by moderate, educated Pakistanis, not extremists. It does seem like we, as a nation, have developed collective amnesia about the nature of our involvement in Afghanistan since our independence, but particularly since April 1978 when the Marxists took over the reins of government from President Daud in what was called the Saur Revolution.

Let’s recap.

Pakistan’s then ruler Zia-ul Haq saw the takeover as a “clear and present” danger. A Marxist government in Kabul meant undisputed Soviet control of Afghanistan. They could use that control to cut through Pakistani Balochistan to the warm waters of the Arabian Sea. They would also support Afghanistan’s irredentist claims over Pakistani territory. And of course, India was in the Soviet camp and very friendly with Afghanistan too.

Pakistan then used the Afghan “mujahideen” leaders who had escaped to Pakistan and were being sustained by Maj-Gen Naseerullah Babar, then IG-FC, as tools for use against President Daud and his efforts to resurrect the Pukhtunistan issue. The idea was to funnel aid to the spontaneous insurgency that had erupted in Afghanistan against the communist takeover. We were able, with US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski’s assistance, to get the CIA to join our modest effort.

While many professionals agreed that the Soviet presence in Afghanistan posed a danger Zia-ul Haq also saw this as an opportunity to advance his “Islamisation” agenda within Pakistan. It was because of this that our negotiators argued that the anti-Soviet campaign had to be projected as a defence of Islam rather than as a defence of Afghan nationalism and independence. They rejected the proposal often put forward by the Americans that perhaps ex-King Zahir Shah as the symbol of Afghan independence and enjoying the support of the Pashtun tribes could be the rallying point for the Afghan resistance.

The Americans obsessed with the Vietnam syndrome acquiesced not only in this but in our demand that all assistance to the Mujahideen should be handled by us. We then got down to setting up madrassahs and training camps on our side of the border to train fighters for the jihad. These establishments were run primarily by our religious parties.

We had the power; we had the control. In one fell stroke we reduced the mujahideen parties from 29 to 7. We decided unilaterally and regardless of battlefield performance that Hikmatyar, the Jama’at-e-Islami protégé, would be the recipient of the largest aid and weapons packages. We were the Pakistani tail that wagged the American dog.

There was never in Washington and Islamabad the expectation that Afghanistan would do more than bleed the Soviets as the Americans had bled in Vietnam. No one expected that Afghanistan would become the catalyst for the collapse and disintegration of the Soviet Union. When that happened, we became convinced that our “statecraft” aided by “divine intervention” had brought a superpower to its knees. We were encouraged by this misplaced notion to think that we could use the same tools elsewhere.

The Americans lost interest in Afghanistan rapidly after the Soviet withdrawal. The nuclear issue then became the determinant of the US-Pak relationship and Pakistan was placed under the Pressler Amendment, which incidentally we had asked for to avoid being subjected to the cumbersome process of the Glenn-Symington Amendment.

Hence the Pakistani perception that Pakistan having served its purpose was discarded like Kleenex.

We, however, remained deeply engaged in Afghanistan and maintained the wherewithal needed for such engagement. We ignored the deleterious impact this was having on our domestic polity. It is now no secret that, Afghanistan apart, the assistance required by the spontaneous uprising in Indian-occupied Kashmir also made it necessary to maintain and enhance rather than dismantle the anti-Soviet jihad machinery.

We could not bring about unity among the jihadi parties. Their internecine quarrels after Najibullah’s ouster caused greater devastation in Afghanistan than had occurred during the decade-long Soviet occupation. When the Taliban appeared on the scene in Afghanistan and were welcomed by the Afghan people we jumped on the bandwagon, ignoring again the blowback of this for us.

Given our assistance to the Taliban and given their conduct, we became alongside the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan a pariah state, barely escaping being put on the list of terrorist states. Peshawar became the city to which the origin of virtually all terrorist incidents in the West were attributed by western intelligence agencies.

Our tribal agencies, the staging ground for support to the anti-Soviet jihad but also for our support for the Taliban became Mullah-dominated. The process was hastened by the introduction of adult franchise without at the same time opening the area to the political parties.

On the eve of 9/11, the world was talking about preventing the “Talibanisation” of Pakistan while observers were debating whether cities like Chaman in Balochistan had slipped as much into Taliban control as Kandahar in Afghanistan.

Let us therefore be clear that the direction of the anti-Soviet jihad was determined by us. We then decided after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan not to dismantle the jihadi network we had created and to use it for other purposes. We decided to support the Taliban and thus furthered the spread of extremism in our border areas.

The American abandonment of the area was criminally negligent; their actions in other parts of the Muslim world were equally harmful; their decision to let Osama bin Laden seek asylum in Afghanistan after his expulsion was inexplicable. Much other blame can be apportioned to America but we too must acknowledge that the misguided policies and ambitions of our leaders have played the principal part in bringing us to our present sorry pass.

The writer is a former foreign secretary

 

KFC Chicken are not the Real Ones

KFC has been a part of our American traditions for many years. Many people, day in and day out, eat at KFC religiously. Do they really know what they are eating? During a recent study of KFC done at the University of New Hampshire, they found some very upsetting facts. First of all, has anybody noticed that just recently, the company has changed their name?

Kentucky Fried Chicken has become KFC. Does anybody know why? We thought the real reason was because of the ‘FRIED’ food issue.

IT’S NOT! !
The reason why they call it KFC is because they can not use the word chicken anymore. Why? KFC does not use real chickens. They actually use genetically manipulated organisms. These so called ‘chickens’ are kept alive by tubes inserted into their bodies to pump blood and nutrients throughout their structure. They have no beaks, no feathers, and no feet. Their bone structure is dramatically shrunk to get more meat out of them. This is great for KFC.

I hope people will start to realize this and let other people know. Please forward this message to as many people as you can.

Kurram Agency: Sectarian Violence Causes People to Flee

September 3/ 2008 – As he trudges home with a bag of wheat flour for the family’s evening meal, Zain-ul-Abideen Ali, 14, looks out of place. “Everyone here knows I am an outsider. I miss my village. But my father says we can never return to Kurram. It is too dangerous,” Ali told IRIN.

Kurram, one of seven tribal agencies on the western border with Afghanistan, has been hit by fierce sectarian clashes in the past 10 months, pitching Sunni Muslims against the minority Shia. Of a total population of 450,000, Kurram is 42 percent Shia, unlike the tribal areas surrounding it, according to official data. Intensified conflict over the past three weeks has led to at least 400 deaths and even more injuries.

The latest clashes, which killed at least 95 people and wounded more than 200, broke out on 30 August, violating a ceasefire reached between the warring groups on the eve of Ramadan. About 1,500 people are reported to have died over the past 18 months in Kurram Agency.

“We will now enforce the ceasefire that the ‘jirga’ [tribal gathering] agreed on in letter and spirit,” Ayaz Mandokhel, the government representative in the area, said.

However, residents say tensions remain. “There is a lot of unease. Violence could resume any time,” Jamal Ahmed, a resident of Parachinar, Kurram’s main town, told IRIN. He said that in the latest fighting, “rival tribes suddenly fell on each other. The houses of ordinary people were set ablaze.”

It is this situation that has brought Ali’s family to Ayubia, 75km north of Islamabad. His father, Haider Ali, 40, feels quite lost.

“It is difficult moving here. My wife and three children all feel like outsiders. We do not speak the same language as the locals, but at least we are safe from fighting and the possibility that someone will burn our home simply because we are Shia,” he said.

Haider Ali’s brother and his family of six have also moved. They are living with distant relatives in the town, but are not certain if they will stay.

“We came because our cousins were kind and offered shelter. But we may move to a larger town. I am a stone-mason and must find work to survive.” However, he said: “We will not return home. It is too dangerous, but we are sad the younger children may grow up not even knowing what home was like. Maybe one day we can go and visit.”

Kurram has seen sporadic sectarian unrest over many decades. However, the violence this time has been particularly grim. “The government must assist people in conflict-hit areas,” Asma Jahangir, chairperson of the Lahore-based Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said.

Bajaur Agency has also been hit by violence, with more than 400,000 people displaced.

“Some people have headed for Peshawar, others for larger cities further south, including Karachi and Lahore, or wherever they can find work. Many are unlikely to return,” said Ayaz Jaffar, who know lives in Peshawar but has family in Bajaur. “More and more of my relatives are going away for ever,” he said.

The scale of such long-term displacements is unknown since no statistics exist. Many fear that once Ramadan ends the fighting may resume. As a result, more and more people are leaving their homes and in some cases all they have ever known to build new lives thousands of miles away

Successful Politicians Are Early Risers

The politicians who get up with the birds

• Tim Dowling
• The Guardian,
• Thursday September 4 2008

Buried among the more electrifying revelations about Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin is the mildly disturbing fact that she gets up at 4.30am every day. Of course in Anchorage, where Palin lives and where sunrise shifts from 4.20am in summer to 10.15am in winter, alarm clock settings may be regarded as a mere matter of personal perversity.

There is, however, a marked tendency among politicians to get up way too early. Condoleezza Rice wakes up at 4.30am every day to go to the gym. George Bush is a famous early riser, but prefers to be tucked up by 9pm. Margaret Thatcher got by on less than five hours’ sleep a night. Gordon Brown is at his desk at six every day, and he lives above the shop.

There are several reasons why a politician may wish to keep farmer’s hours. Sometimes you might be in the middle of prosecuting a big, not entirely successful war in a distant country where, because of the time difference, the action starts early. If you are trying to demonstrate that despite your hectic governor/hockey-mom diary, your work-life balance remains in graceful equipoise, getting up before dawn to get stuff done is a simple way of cheating.

Not every politician shares this love of the vampire shift. David Cameron recently suggested that he would be “a different sort of prime minister” and that a healthy work-life balance might include the occasional lie in. “If you immerse yourself from 5am until 11pm, it so affects your balance, family life, your sense of who you are,” he told the Daily Mail, implying that by getting up early Brown was doing something foolish and vaguely evil. And John McCain has recently let it be known that sometimes he sleeps until 8am. With hours like that, it’s a wonder he and his running mate have ever met.

Honor to Balochistan

Buried alive in the name of tradition 

September 1/ 2008 – Several weeks ago armed tribesmen in Balochistan forced five women out of their village, shot and injured them, and buried them alive in the scrub.

The five were from the village of Babakot, about 80km from Usta Mohammad, the main city of Jaffarabad District, Balochistan Province.

Three of the women were teenagers. The other two were their mothers. Wild animals had left the bodies half eaten.

They were killed because the girls had attempted to make their own choice in marriage, a right legally available in Pakistan to every adult, male or female.

“There is nothing in law that can prevent a woman over 18 making her own decision regarding marriage. That has been decided by the Supreme Court, and there is no ambiguity about this. But still, today, women continue to be killed in the name of the ‘honour’ of their families for making such decisions,” said Naila Hassan, a Quetta-based lawyer.

The gruesome murders in Balochistan have focused attention on crimes committed against women in the name of “tradition”.

Settling scores

Women fall victim to violence and abuse on a daily basis. Apart from “honour” killings – in which women are killed because they are perceived to have injured the “honour” of their families by choosing to marry someone of their choice, or by engaging in behaviour deemed “illicit” – such violence takes the form of customs in which women may be handed over to rival groups to settle a feud. Such traditions are known as ‘swara’ or ‘vani’.

Child marriages, in which girls as young as eight or 10 may be wed, are also not unknown.

“We need someone to come forward and make an effort to change these traditions. Though laws exist, they are ineffective. We keep hearing of more and more `honour’ killings while feudal and tribal leaders defend such practices” .

Shot on suspicion of having an affair

Crimes committed in the name of tradition take place almost daily. This week, near the town of Sukkur in Sindh Province, a woman was allegedly shot dead by her husband as she slept. Apparently, the husband said, he suspected her of extra-marital relations.

The killing of women – and often the man they are suspected of having relations with – is known as ‘karo-kari’, or ‘black woman, black man’, in the parts of Sindh, Punjab and Balochistan where it is most often practiced.

The fear of tradition is a powerful influence on the lives of women. “I never let my daughter, who is 17, leave the house alone or walk home from her college on her own. If she even accidentally exchanges a glance with a man she faces being labelled ‘immoral’. This, in our society, could mean death for her, said Rabea Bibi, 45, as she waited outside the gates of a Quetta college to escort her daughter home.

Bodies of the Five Women Buried Alive ve Been Removed to Destroy Vital Evidence

The Balochistan police, in a bid to destroy any available evidence, have removed three of the bodies of the five women who were buried alive in Baba Kot, Jafferabad. (For details please refer to the AHRC Urgent Appeal: PAKISTAN: Five women buried alive, allegedly by the brother of a minister – http://www.ahrchk.net/ua/mainfile.php/2008/2969/). The women, including three young girls between 16 – 18 years-of-age were buried alive after being shot because the three younger girls wanted to marry persons of their own choice. The bodies were finally recovered on September 2, 2008.

The bodies of the five women were initially shifted between midnight on August 30 and 31 after being desecrated by wild animals as the ‘graves’ were less than two feet deep. It is firmly believed that the police and provincial authorities, who are under tremendous pressure from protests through out the country and debates in the Senate and provincial assembly of Sindh, shifted the bodies in order to destroy evidence. It is an accepted fact by the government of Pakistan and authorities in Balochistan that all the women were buried in a single grave at Baba Kot. However, the local area police have announced the recovery of only two bodies. Eye witnesses, living in the area reported that during the night of Saturday the early morning of Sunday, the police, in the company of some soldiers arrived with heavy equipment and removed the bodies in an ambulance belonging to a famous charitable organization. 

Despite the delay of over a month and a half the police have not instigated an investigation or made any effort to arrest the perpetrators. The main perpetrator has a history of killing people on the pretext of honor killings. It is known that he previously killed eight persons on the same pretext. In the month of May 2008, he purchased impunity by paying a fine of Rs. 10 million (around US $150,000.) through a Jirga (an illegal tribal judiciary), which was presided over by Mr. Nadir Magsi, the provincial minister of the Sindh government. The money was paid in compensation to the families of the victims.

Since the disclosure of the case by the Asian Human Rights Commission the Balochistan police have started destroying any evidence that might prove useful to an eventual investigation. First, the inspector general of police (IGP) Balochistan sent a report to federal secretary of the interior, denying the existence of such a case. This report was rejected out of hand by the secretary of the interior who demanded a factual report. He was particularly concerned by the incident as the chief minister of Balochistan was mentioned in the urgent appeal. However, the IGP’s second report was also rejected by the secretary. The federal government then assigned Mr. Ghulam Shabbir Sheikh, the Deputy Inspector General (DIG), to investigate the case and report. Contrary to expectations, as the perpetrators had been named, Mr. Sheikh arrested three of the relatives of two of the deceased girls. These persons confessed, as is usual for people in police custody, to the killings and the burials. Strangely, the police have arrested seven persons in connection with the case but have so far only recovered two of the bodies which are vital for forensic evidence.

The police surgeon, Dr. Mashwani, while disclosing the report, said that the girls were killed by blunt weapons and not by bullets but then later in the evening of the same day she told a television channel that bullet marks were also found. It was later confirmed in the media that the girls had been shot dead. 

The advisor to the prime minister on interior affairs and minister in charge, Mr. Rehman Malik, is also contributing to the confusion over the case. On September 4, he told the media that three persons had been killed while traveling in a taxi and that their bodies had been properly bathed before burial. He categorically stated that there was no information that five women had been buried alive. The minister was, in fact, referring to another case which occurred in January 2006 in which the same perpetrators killed three persons at Shahi Chowki, who were traveling in a taxi. Ms. Parveen, a school teacher, was going with her boy friend to be married at a civil court. All the three were killed by their assailants. 

After a debate in the senate Mr. Tariq Khosa, former Inspector General of Police, was assigned to investigate the case but, unaccountably, the paperwork authorizing him to head a committee and make inquiries on the behalf of the government was never finalised. The Balochistan police hurriedly took charge of the case and even prevented Mr. Khosa from visiting the province. Now it is reported that the government of Pakistan has halted further investigations into the case. 

There are conscious efforts by persons with vested interests and those in official circles to hide the facts about the case. Currently there are no independent investigation procedures in Pakistan to investigate cases of heinous crimes. In addition to this, there is an alarming lack of sensitivity among the legal professionals, including the judiciary regarding the practice of torture, violence against women and tribal traditions and customs against the weaker sections of the population. In such circumstances the damage such practices causes to the possibility of maintaining the rule of law in the country goes understated. This lack of sensitivity is equally shared by the prosecution and the law enforcement agencies. It is due to this there is a lack of development in the criminal law jurisprudence in Pakistan. Pakistan has thus far failed to effectively address the question of violence by the powerful groups.

There is a need to conduct a thorough and independent judicial enquiry into this case so that the facts can be revealed. In a case where five women are buried alive in the pretext of honour killings it is absolutely vital that such a heinous crime be investigated and the perpetrators punished to the fullest extent of the law. A complete overhaul of the investigation system is the demand of the day. In any case before them, the prosecution must use the very latest developments available to uncover the truth and not rely on confessions which are usually obtained through torture.