by Moin Ansari
www.RupeeNews.com

While the usual gaggle of sycophants and media hive-minders — along with some ordinarily perspicacious analysts — tell us that Barack Obama literally changed the course of human history by disgorging a great load of thrice-chewed cud about nuclear disarmament in Prague this week, the high-tech drone war the great hero of peace is waging inside the sovereign territory of America’s ally, Pakistan, is helping drive tens of thousands of people from their homes and killing civilians almost daily. Talking Peace in Prague, Dropping Bombs in Pakistan, Hard Rain Keeps Falling By CHRIS FLOYD

The US is not used to hearing an earful in Islamabad. It usually hands over lists to the leaders. When they do not comply, they are threatened with “we will bomb you to the stone ages” (Musharraf), or “we will make a horrible example of you (Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto), or “we will eliminate you if you do not let us bomb Iran(Liaqat Ali Khan) or “how dare you shut down the US base in Badabare (Ayub Khan). Some world and Pakistani leaders who tried to go against the grain paid with their lives.

Liaqat Ali Khan who had negotated a confederation with King Zahir Shah of Afghanistan, and  Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto who had pledged himself to making a nuclear bomb were to iconic figures and were actually assassinated. Ayub Khan and Pervez Musharraf had to leave office when they tried to go against their masters. THE PAKISTANI RESILIENCE IN THE FACE OF THREATS: Mountbatten, Nehru, Mohandas Gandhi, Indira, Kruschev, Johnson, Carter, Kissinger, Nixon, Gorbachev, Clinton, Armitage, Bush, Karzai, Vajpayee, Singh have all threatened Pakistan: The Pakistanis are used to it…so what else is new?!! Pakistan’s Nuclear Program should be seen in the backdrop of these threats.

The American were once again  reminded of India’s designs in Afghanistan.INDIRA GANDHI to HENRY KISSINGER: “The Northwest Frontier Province belongs to India and the only way to get there is through the Punjab”. The American message to work with India against China was once agine rebutted. The idea of becoming subservient to India is abhorrent and that of cooperation withIndia, withthe object of promoting tension with China, equally repugnant.” Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto

“Pakistan does not expect a blank chack and will not give one“. Pakistani Foreign Minister to Admiral Mullen and Richard Hobrooke

According to Tariq Ali, the current President of Pakistan was coronated because of US largess who wanted a compliant president in Pakistan. General Kiyani was thoroughly vetted and he was schmoozed by Washington for about a week recently. With this setup in mind, Mr. Holbrooke, and Admiral Mullen went on an aggressive propoganda campaign to malign the ISI. Somewhere along the way they got lost in their own words and began speaking against the Pakistan Army too. When they arrived in Islamabad, they expected to do some heavey talking. What they got instead were some harsh words. This time around, the civilian and military leadership got together and presented a joint front to the Americans.

As each passing week of the American drone campaign brings yet another harvest of civilian deaths, more and more Pakistanis are radicalized, and the government — the nuclear-armed government — grows ever more shaky…Thus the attacks ordered by Obama in Pakistan are escalating the threat of exactly the kind of nuclear instability that he decried in Prague. Talking Peace in Prague, Dropping Bombs in Pakistan, Hard Rain Keeps Falling By CHRIS FLOYD

The US tried to dilute the PPP government’s  joint military-civilian front by investigating alternatives. For the first time, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was summoned to the US Embassy in Islamabad and he went. On previous occasions, he had refused to go the US Embassy and criticized those who did. However this time he acquiesced. Hungry for power, he may have  been questioned on his position on the drones and the joint patrolling. It must be recalled that during Kargil, Mr. Sharifran to Washington to surrender at the White House. Where there is smoke there is fire. Something is cooking in the PMLN-US Embassy cauldron and its not nihari. The political scene smells of foul fish. We will soon find out what was fishy, or whether the US was successful in fishing in troubled waters.

“American drone attacks on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan are causing a massive humanitarian emergency, Pakistani officials claimed after a new attack yesterday killed 13 people. The dead and injured included foreign militants, but women and children were also killed when two missiles hit a house in the village of Data Khel, near the Afghan border, according to local officials.

“As many as 1m people have fled their homes in the Tribal Areas to escape attacks by the unmanned spy planes as well as bombings by the Pakistani army….

“So far 546,000 have registered as internally displaced people (IDPs) according to figures provided by Rabia Ali, spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and Maqbool Shah Roghani, administrator for IDPs at the Commission for Afghan Refugees. The commissioner’s office says there are thousands more unregistered people who have taken refuge with relatives and friends or who are in rented accommodation. Talking Peace in Prague, Dropping Bombs in Pakistan, Hard Rain Keeps Falling By CHRIS FLOYD

This time around, when Admiral Mullen and Mr. Richard Holbrooke landed in Islamabad, a different sort of welcome awaited them. They were reminded of their earlier statements and Pakistan politely reminded them of the Red Lines that had been drawn.

“The best way to get out of Afghanistan fast is (for) people to think we’re staying.” Sen. John McCain of Arizona. WSJ

The inability to create a facade of victory in Afghanistan creates an embarrassing situation for the incompetent US Generals who have been painting a rosy picture for the American public. How long can General Patraeus, Admiral Mullen and Richard Holbrooke continue to fool the American people? The answer is obvious, not for very long.

Already the polls have begun to shift. Most American view the economy as the number one problem and Iraq and Afghanistan a distant second. About half of America now favors a withdrawal from Afghanistan. Of course there is near consensus on leaving Baghdad.

The CIA faces its toughest test yet to prove wrong the suspicions of many within the Pakistani strategic community that some of the terrorism exported from Afghan soil into Pakistan has direct or indirect support from Washington.

The immediate test centres on Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the bandits who present themselves as Pakistani Taliban. The Americans have begun some cosmetic drone attacks on Baitullah’sterritory and there are reports Washington has agreed to launch a joint operation withPakistan against this bandit. The purpose is to assuage Pakistani concerns about the US role. In July last year, Pakistan’s military leadership confronted senior CIA and US military commanders withevidenceshowing Washington indirectly protecting anti-Pakistan terrorists on the ground. This newspaper broke that story on Aug. 5, 2008, with a front- page headline, “US told not to back terrorism against Pakistan.”

Mehsud is a good example. This bandit and his former leader and associate, Abdullah Mehsud, pioneered the attacks on Chinese interests in Pakistan, which was the first thing Abdullah did after being released from Gitmo in 2003. Interestingly, he was not handed back to Pakistan despite being a Pakistani citizen, but was released to Afghanistan where he went back into the custody of the US military and the Karzai government. Abdullah was killed when Pakistani security forces caught him sneaking back into Balochistan from Afghanistan, where he most probably was meeting his handlers. How he financed, armed and sustained a 25,000-strong militia remains beyond explanation. This militia continues to have quality arms and generous funding.

Until now CIA drones have never targeted Abdullah or Baitullah or any other militia that is committed to attacking Pakistan. During the operations in Bajaur, our soldiers were reportedly stunned at one point to see close to 600 well-armed terrorists come in from Afghanistan, fight the Pakistani military and then escape across the border. The CIA never attacks such “terrorists.” There has been a meteoric rise in the number of anti-Pakistan militias and fighters within our tribal belt since 2004, complete withreligiousbrainwashing justifying the killing of Pakistanis as a first priority. This has coincided with the launch of terrorism in Balochistan and northern Pakistan, the area between Gwadar port and the Chinese border. The CIA’s footprints, Thursday, April 09, 2009, Ahmed Quraishi. The writer works for Geo TV. Email: aq@ahmedquraishil.com

Pakistan helped the US as a friend, not as a paymaster. No amount of money is enough for lost Pakistani lives. It is insensitive to place a Dollar value on the heads of 4000 Pakistani soldiers who lost their lives fighting the terrorists. It is crass to place a monetary value on the hundreds of Pakistani civilians who died because Pakistan has been supporting the American war in Afghanistan. Neither the government, nor the people nor the president of Pakistan are indentured servants of anyone. Pakistan was helping the US as a friend and an ally.

In order to punish the real or imaginary Pakistani tolerance for “Afghan Taliban” – the real Taliban, I must add – someone who wields power in Afghanistan decided to make Pakistan pay by grooming their own Islamic fighters who’d solely focus on fighting Pakistan (as compared to the Afghan Taliban who focus on fighting the Americans insideAfghanistan) – professional killers trained in the art of recruiting and organising death squads, Islam-focused propaganda experts fluent in Pashto, Uzbek, Arabic and, possibly, Chechen, and develop conduits for money and arms supplies from Afghanistan into Pakistan.

The US uses India to ratchet up the heat on Pakistan whenever there is a hiccup in the relationship. These days the Indian climbdown coincides with renewed signs that Pakistan’s political and military leaderships are cooperating with Washington.

In 2002, the Americans were allowed to establish bases in BalochistanandCIA was given the right to recruit Pakistanis in the tribal belt. These two areas of Pakistan are now the most disturbed parts of our country. And now our territory is being used to attack the interests of Iran and China. Washington is creating conditions across our western belt that would make it impossible for China to pursue trade and energy corridors through Pakistan.

Hopefully, Mr Richard Holbrooke heard in Islamabad that we don’t accept American diktat over Afghanistan where we have our own interests to watch like everyone else. The CIA’s footprints, Thursday, April 09, 2009, Ahmed Quraishi. The writer works for Geo TV. Email: aq@ahmedquraishil.com

The PMLQ, the PMLN, the JI and Senator Mushahid Hussain etc. as well as the National Assembly of Pakistan have passed a resolution asking to halt the Drones and stop the fighting. “They” can ignore it at their own risk.

They thought that General Kiyani was a “softy” who would roll over and play dead. When he clearly informed the US of the red lines, Richard Hobrooke and Armiral Mullen began their rhetoric against the Pakistani Army and the Pakistani ISI. Prime Minister Gilani and even Ambassador Haqqani defended both institutions (even though Haqqani had derided the army for more than two decades).

To convince Pakistan, an army of sabateurs are on the attack, blowing up schools, buildings, and offices in Pakistani cities. These are the operations that Vice President Biden would not talk about.

Pakistan faced similar issues during the First Afghan war when Russian agents would blow up civilians in Pakistan as reprisal for the American-Pakistan’s war against the USSR. It was the KGB-Khad-RAW then. The same players are at it again. The problems faced by Pakistan are the making of RAW (Indian intelligence services) and their cohorts in Afghanistan. When the US planted an anti-Pakistan government in Kabul, Mr. Karzai (the mayor of Kabul) threatened Pakistan to cover his incompetence and inept narco-warlord government.

In considering the ramifications of Obama’s escalation of the drone war, we understandably tend to focus on the individual attacks themselves: pinpoint, quickly in, quickly out, over and done with. And even if we denounce the inevitable “collateral damage” when a house or group of houses is destroyed, or when the wrong target is struck, the small scale of each individual attack still leaves the impression of a contained, localized phenomenon. But this is a gross distortion of the reality. For the purpose and nature of a terrorist attack is not just the destruction of an immediate target; the point is to engender widespread fear and chaos: Where will the next strike come? When will it come? Who will die next time?

(And make no mistake: a drone assault on an isolated, defenseless village is a quintessential terrorist attack, designed to induce terror, punish the enemy and force change by deadly violence. It is in no way comparable to any traditional notion of honorable combat. It is simply industrialized, corporatized, computerized slaughter.)

So the effects of Obama’s drone war are not limited to the few houses destroyed here and there. The attacks have spawned, or greatly added to, a humanitarian catastrophe that remains largely hidden from the world — and certainly from the well-wadded Western “liberals” who cheer Obama’s savvy toughness in the “good war” on the Af-Pak front. As The Times reports, almost a million people have been driven from their homes in Pakistan’s Tribal Areas to escape the American drones, and the bombs of Washington’s Pakistani proxies: Talking Peace in Prague, Dropping Bombs in Pakistan, Hard Rain Keeps Falling By CHRIS FLOYD