^ Thanks
The Finance Minister who authorised the writing off of his loans is the man selected by the military regime to follow him as PM. **Apart from having a history of service as an investment banker in the United States during a period of the most creative money laundering in the banking history of that country, this candidate also has an American-Jewish family. His spouse, Mrs. Gloria Cohen Aziz is a wealthy, well connected socialite with an interest in many private firms of consultants as well as security contractors for the US government. **These contractors and consultants have worked in Afghanistan since 1977; they have also worked in Pakistan, in Russia not to mention Iraq.
She has travelled to Pakistan regularly to case the joint, as the Americans say, with the State Department spouse of a well known former US Ambassador to Pakistan who oversaw the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. The Americans are so keen to see her installed in Pakistan that they have left Iraq two days early to facilitate her entry into the country-an indication of the importance of the job she, not any PM is expected to do in Pakistan. Her arrival at the Prime Minister’s house in Pakistan should be a slap in the face of all those Muslims who have been horrified and disgusted by the humiliation and torture of Muslim prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, in Iraq, in Afghanistan and the hate crimes against Muslim citizens of the United States. There is no conceivable way in which either of the two candidates for premiership, one of whom was elected on June 29, 2004, can be expected to serve the state or the long suffering people of Pakistan. They have no political agenda, no social or economic plan to lay before the population of Pakistan. The question is, then who would they be serving? The answer is obvious. Mr. Aziz is expected to be the Ayad Allawi of Pakistan. And he has been groomed for the job. Pakistan may not have been invaded by the US forces but it has been occupied by its own military, which works on the US direction, through one man. This should also serve as a lesson to all those conservative political parties that cooperated in the perpetuation of military rule in Pakistan and continue to abstain, instead of voting out the present set-up.
An appraisal of policy making at the national level, the conduct of official business and the exercise of power in Pakistan reveals the existence of networks and patterns that have been designed and put in place to achieve specific administrative and political objectives that yield economic and strategic benefits to vested interest groups, but have little to do with the interest of the general public. During the past five years such patterns have been further consolidated through policy plans. The rationale originally given for the coup d’etat of October 1999 was exactly the same as that given for earlier military takeovers in Pakistan: a stagnant economy, bad governance, corruption and lawlessness, among other things, were said to have made it impossible for the military to tolerate the elected civilian government. In traditional Pakistani style a pre-selected team of so-called experts set about redesigning national institutions and the economy. The adjustments made were expected to facilitate the acceptance in Pakistan of the broader strategic agenda of the international constituency of the military regime.
This agenda included the secularisation of national institutions, which would weaken the support-base of the larger community of Muslim states under pressure across the world. It would facilitate Israel’s recognition by Pakistan, diminish the importance of liberation struggle in Palestine and and divert attention from the occupation of Iraq. Secularisation was also expected to facilitate the activities of the Ahmadiya community within Pakistan. The electoral concessions and relief from punishment for blasphemy that has been sought for the minorities in Pakistan masks concessions that would automatically accrue to the Ahmadis who have an interest in enlarging and empowering their community. This is bound to create communal tension in Pakistan.
Dialogue with India on outstanding issues were expected to pave the way for some form of confederation with India. An American-Pakistani PM would, in American eyes be the ideal person to negotiate with India on Kashmir. Besides enabling the armed forces to divert personnel to civil government and more profitable pursuits, this would contribute to the consolidation of the hold over the country of the core group responsible for the military takeover. It would also reassure their international constituency about the containment of the potential of Pakistan’s armed forces for resisting global security initiatives that were not in the interest of Pakistan and Muslim communities. This was presented to the forces as a more attractive concept than “jihad”, which had been their doctrine and which made the West uncomfortable.
The achievement of these broad objectives required a longer than usual time span in power for those who were to implement their personal agenda, as well as the international security agenda of major powers after the Cold War. Unfortunately Britain and the United States were correct in their assessment that the successor states of the USSR (including Russia), new democracies of Europe, the Central Asian states and China would be too deeply involved in economic transformation to bother about security issues that were not of direct concern to them.
Major world powers involved in the reordering of international security systems were pleased with the controlled electoral exercise that took place in Pakistan on October 10, 2002. The rules of the game were entirely of the establishment’s choosing. Every single argument put forward by the military government to justify the holding of elections without installing an interim government and in order to provide a level playing field for all candidates, became null and void as a result of official canvassing in support of specially vetted politicians prior to, and during, the elections. Now history is repeating itself.
http://www.nation.com.pk/daily/july-2004/1/EDITOR/op1.asp
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