Wow! This guy Ahmed Qureshi has done a great job with summing up some issues. Excellent article here. Long but more than worth reading.
Share your views.
The Plan To Topple Pakistan Military
Ahmed Qureshi
http://www.ahmedquraishi.com/latest_col.php?id=6
This is not about Musharraf anymore. This is about clipping the wings
of a strong Pakistani military, denying space for China in Pakistan,
squashing the ISI, stirring ethnic unrest, and neutralizing Pakistan
's nuclear program. The first shot in this plan was fired in Pakistan
's Balochistan province in 2004. The last bullet will be toppling
Musharraf, sidelining the military and installing a pliant government
in Islamabad . Musharraf shares the blame for letting things come this
far. But he is also punching holes in Washington 's game plan. He
needs to be supported.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan —On the evening of Tuesday, 26 September, 2006,
Pakistani strongman Pervez Musharraf walked into the studio of Comedy
Central’s ‘Daily Show’ with Jon Stewart, the first sitting president
anywhere to dare do this political satire show.
Stewart offered his guest some tea and cookies and played the perfect
host by asking, “Is it good?” before springing a surprise: “Where’s
Osama bin Laden?”
“I don’t know,” Musharraf replied, as the audience enjoyed the rare
sight of a strong leader apparently cornered. " You know where he is?"
Musharraf snapped back, “You lead on, we’ll follow you.”
What Gen. Musharraf didn’t know then is that he really was being
cornered. Some of the smiles that greeted him in Washington and back
home gave no hint of the betrayal that awaited him.
As he completed the remaining part of his U.S. visit, his allies in
Washington and elsewhere, as all evidence suggests now, were plotting
his downfall. They had decided to take a page from the book of
successful ‘color revolutions’ where western governments covertly used
money, private media, student unions, NGOs and international pressure
to stage coups, basically overthrowing individuals not fitting well
with Washington’s agenda.
This recipe proved its success in former Yugoslavia , and more
recently in Georgia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
In Pakistan, the target is a Pakistani president who refuses to play
ball with the United States on Afghanistan, China, and Dr. A.Q. Khan.
To get rid of him, an impressive operation is underway:
A carefully crafted media blitzkrieg launched early this year
assailing the Pakistani president from all sides, questioning his
power, his role in Washington’s war on terror and predicting his
downfall.
Money pumped into the country to pay for organized dissent.
Willing activists assigned to mobilize and organize accessible social groups.
A campaign waged on Internet where tens of mailing lists and ‘news
agencies’ have sprung up from nowhere, all demonizing Musharraf and
the Pakistani military.
European- and American-funded Pakistani NGOs taking a temporary leave
from their real jobs to work as a makeshift anti-government
mobilization machine.
U.S. government agencies directly funding some private Pakistani
television networks; the channels go into an open anti-government
mode, cashing in on some manufactured and other real public grievances
regarding inflation and corruption.
Some of Musharraf’s shady and corrupt political allies feed this
campaign, hoping to stay in power under a weakened president.
All this groundwork completed and chips in place when the judicial
crisis breaks out in March 2007. Even Pakistani politicians surprised
at a well-greased and well-organized lawyers campaign, complete with
flyers, rented cars and buses, excellent event-management and media
outreach.
Currently, students are being recruited and organized into a street
movement. The work is ongoing and urban Pakistani students are being
cultivated, especially using popular Internet Web sites and ‘online
hangouts’. The people behind this effort are mostly unknown and
faceless, limiting themselves to organizing sporadic, small student
gatherings in Lahore and Islamabad, complete with banners, placards
and little babies with arm bands for maximum media effect. No major
student association has announced yet that it is behind these student
protests, which is a very interesting fact glossed over by most
journalists covering this story. Only a few students from affluent
schools have responded so far and it’s not because the Pakistani
government’s countermeasures are effective. They’re not. The reason is
that social activism attracts people from affluent backgrounds,
closely reflecting a uniquely Pakistani phenomenon where local NGOs
are mostly founded and run by rich, westernized Pakistanis. All of
this may appear to be spur-of-the-moment and Musharraf-specific. But
it all really began almost three years ago, when, out of the blue and
recycling old political arguments, Mr. Akbar Bugti launched an armed
rebellion against the Pakistani state, surprising security analysts by
using rockets and other military equipment that shouldn’t normally be
available to a smalltime village thug. Since then, Islamabad sits on a
pile of evidence that links Mr. Bugti’s campaign to money and
ammunition and logistical support from Afghanistan, directly aided by
the Indians and the Karzai administration, with the Americans turning
a blind eye.
For reasons not clear to our analysts yet, Islamabad has kept quiet on
Washington’s involvement with anti-Pakistan elements in Afghanistan.
But Pakistan did send an indirect public message to the Americans
recently.
“We have indications of Indian involvement with anti-state elements in
Pakistan ,” declared the spokesman of the Pakistan Foreign Office in a
regular briefing in October. The statement was terse and direct and
the spokesman, Ms. Tasnim Aslam, quickly moved on to other issues.
This is how a Pakistani official explained Ms. Aslam’s statement:
“What she was really saying is this: We know what the Indians are
doing. They’ve sold the Americans on the idea that [the Indians] are
an authority on Pakistan and can be helpful in Afghanistan. The
Americans have bought the idea and are in on the plan, giving the
Indians a free hand in Afghanistan. What the Americans don’t know is
that we, too, know the Indians very well. Better still, we know
Afghanistan very well. You can’t beat us at our own game.”
Mr. Bugti’s armed rebellion coincided with the Gwadar project entering
its final stages. No coincidence here. Mr. Bugti’s real job was to
scare the Chinese away and scuttle Chinese President Hu Jintao’s
planned visit to Gwadar a few months later to formally launch the port
city.
Gwadar is the pinnacle of Sino-Pakistani strategic cooperation. It’s a
modern port city that is supposed to link Central Asia, western China,
and Pakistan with markets in Mideast and Africa . It’s supposed to
have roads stretching all the way to China. It’s no coincidence either
that China has also earmarked millions of dollars to renovate the
Karakoram Highway linking northern Pakistan to western China.
Some reports in the American media, however, have accused Pakistan and
China of building a naval base in the guise of a commercial seaport
directly overlooking international oil shipping lanes. The Indians and
some other regional actors are also not comfortable with this project
because they see it as commercial competition.
What Mr. Bugti’s regional and international supporters never expected
is Pakistan moving firmly and strongly to nip his rebellion in the
bud. Even Mr. Bugti himself probably never expected the Pakistani
state to react in the way it did to his betrayal of the homeland. He
was killed in a military operation where scores of his mercenaries
surrendered to Pakistan army soldiers.
U.S. intelligence and their Indian advisors could not cultivate an
immediate replacement for Mr. Bugti. So they moved to Plan B. They
supported Abdullah Mehsud, a Pakistani Taliban fighter held for five
years in Guantanamo Bay , and then handed over back to the Afghan
government, only to return to his homeland, Pakistan, to kidnap two
Chinese engineers working in Balochistan, one of whom was eventually
killed during a rescue operation by the Pakistani government.
Islamabad could not tolerate this shadowy figure, who was creating a
following among ordinary Pakistanis masquerading as a Taliban while in
reality towing a vague agenda. He was rightly eliminated earlier this
year by Pakistani security forces while secretly returning from
Afghanistan after meeting his handlers there. Again, no surprises
here.
SMELLING A RAT
This is where Pakistani political and military officials finally
started smelling a rat. All of this was an indication of a bigger
problem. There were growing indications that, ever since Islamabad
joined Washington’s regional plans, Pakistan was gradually turning
into a ‘besieged-nation’, heavily targeted by the American media while
being subjected to strategic sabotage and espionage from Afghanistan.
Afghanistan , under America 's watch, has turned into a vast staging
ground for sophisticated psychological and military operations to
destabilize neighboring Pakistan.
During the past three years, the heat has gradually been turned up
against Pakistan and its military along Pakistan’s western regions:
A shadowy group called the BLA, a Cold War relic, rose from the dead
to restart a separatist war in southwestern Pakistan.
Bugti’s death was a blow to neo-BLA, but the shadowy group’s backers
didn’t repent. His grandson, Brahmdagh Bugti, is currently enjoying a
safe shelter in the Afghan capital, Kabul, where he continues to
operate and remote-control his assets in Pakistan.
Saboteurs trained in Afghanistan have been inserted into Pakistan to
aggravate extremist passions here, especially after the Red Mosque
operation.
Chinese citizens continue to be targeted by individuals pretending to
be Islamists, when no known Islamic group has claimed responsibility.
A succession of ‘religious rebels’ with suspicious foreign links have
suddenly emerged in Pakistan over the past months claiming to be
‘Pakistani Taliban’. Some of the names include Abdul Rashid Ghazi,
Baitullah Mehsud, and now the Maulana of Swat. Some of them have used
and are using encrypted communication equipment far superior to what
Pakistani military owns.
Money and weapons have been fed into the religious movements and al
Qaeda remnants in the tribal areas. Exploiting the situation, assets
within the Pakistani media started promoting the idea that the
Pakistani military was killing its own people. The rest of the
unsuspecting media quickly picked up this message. Some botched
American and Pakistani military operations against Al Qaeda that
caused civilian deaths accidentally fed this media campaign.
This was the perfect timing for the launch of Military, Inc.: Inside
Pakistan’s Military Economy , a book authored by Dr. Ayesha Siddiqa
Agha, a columnist for a Pakistani English-language paper and a
correspondent for ‘Jane’s Defence Weekly’, a private intelligence
service founded by experts close to the British intelligence.
TARGET: PAK MILITARY
The book was launched in Pakistan in early 2007 by Oxford Press. And,
contrary to most reports, it is openly available in Islamabad’s
biggest bookshops. The book portrays the Pakistani military as an
institution that is eating up whatever little resources Pakistan has.
Pakistani military’s successful financial management, creating
alternate financial sources to spend on a vast military machine and
build a conventional and nuclear near-match with a neighboring
adversary five times larger – an impressive record for any nation by
any standard – was distorted in the book and reduced to a mere attempt
by the military to control the nation’s economy in the same way it was
controlling its politics.
The timing was interesting. After all, it was hard to defend a
military in the eyes of its own proud people when the chief of the
military is ruling the country, the army is fighting insurgents and
extremists who claim to be defending Islam, grumpy politicians are out
of business, and the military’s side businesses, meant to feed the
nation’s military machine, are doing well compared to the shabby state
of the nation’s civilian departments.
A closer look at Ms. Siddiqa, the author, revealed disturbing
information to Pakistani officials. In the months before launching her
book, she was a frequent visitor to India where, as a defense expert,
she cultivated important contacts. On her return, she developed
friendship with an Indian lady diplomat posted in Islamabad. Both of
these activities – travel to India and ties to Indian diplomats – are
not a crime in Pakistan and don’t raise interest anymore. Pakistanis
are hospitable and friendly people and these qualities have been amply
displayed to the Indians during the four-year-old peace process.
What is interesting is that Ms. Siddiqa left her car in the house of
the said Indian diplomat during one of her recent trips to London.
And, according to a report, she stayed in London at a place owned by
an individual linked to the Indian lady diplomat friend in Islamabad.
The point here is this: Who assigned her to investigate the Pakistani
Armed Forces and present a distorted image of a proud an efficient
Pakistani institution?
From 1988 to 2001, Dr. Siddiqa worked in the Pakistan civil service,
the Pakistani civil bureaucracy. Her responsibilities included dealing
with Military Accounts, which come under the Pakistan Ministry of
Defense. She had thirteen years of rich experience in dealing with the
budgetary matters of the Pakistani military and people working in this
area.
Dr. Siddiqa received a year-long fellowship to research and write a
book in the United States. There are strong indications that some of
her Indian contacts played a role in arranging financing for her book
project through a paid fellowship. The final manuscript of her book
was vetted at a publishing office in New Delhi.
All of these details are insignificant if detached from the real issue
at hand. And the issue is the demonization of the Pakistani military
as an integral part of the media siege around Pakistan, with the
American media leading the way in this campaign.
Some of the juicy details of this campaign include:
The attempt by Dr. Siddiqa to pitch junior officers against senior
officers in Pakistan Armed Forces by alleging discrimination in the
distribution of benefits. Apart from being malicious and unfounded,
her argument was carefully designed to generate frustration and
demoralize Pakistani soldiers.
The American media insisting on handing over Dr. A. Q. Khan to the
United States so that a final conviction against the Pakistani
military can be secured.
Mrs. Benazir Bhutto demanding after returning to Pakistan that the ISI
be restructured; and in a press conference during her house arrest in
Lahore in November she went as far as asking Pakistan army officers to
revolt against the army chief, a damning attempt at destroying a
professional army from within.
Some of this appears to be eerily similar to the campaign waged
against the Pakistani military in 1999, when, in July that year, an
unsigned full page advertisement appeared in major American newspapers
with the following headline: “A Modern Rogue Army With Its Finger On
The Nuclear Button.”
Till this day, it is not clear who exactly paid for such an expensive
newspaper full-page advertisement. But one thing is clear: the agenda
behind that advertisement is back in action.
Strangely, just a few days before Mrs. Bhutto’s statements about
restructuring the ISI and her open call to army officers to stage a
mutiny against their leadership, the American conservative magazine
The Weekly Standard interviewed an American security expert who
offered similar ideas:
“A large number of ISI agents who are responsible for helping the
Taliban and al Qaeda should be thrown in jail or killed. What I think
we should do in Pakistan is a parallel version of what Iran has run
against us in Iraq : giving money [and] empowering actors. Some of
this will involve working with some shady characters, but the
alternative—sending U.S. forces into Pakistan for a sustained bombing
campaign—is worse.” Steve Schippert, Weekly Standard, Nov. 2007 .
In addition to these media attacks, which security experts call
‘psychological operations’, the American media and politicians have
intensified over the past year their campaign to prepare the
international public opinion to accept a western intervention in
Pakistan along the lines of Iraq and Afghanistan:
Newsweek came up with an entire cover story with a single storyline:
Pakistan is a more dangerous place than Iraq.
Senior American politicians, Republican and Democrat, have argued that
Pakistan is more dangerous than Iran and merits similar treatment. On
20 October, senator Joe Biden told ABC News that Washington needs to
put soldiers on the ground in Pakistan and invite the international
community to join in. “We should be in there,” he said. “We should be
supplying tens of millions of dollars to build new schools to compete
with the madrassas. We should be in there building democratic
institutions. We should be in there, and get the rest of the world in
there, giving some structure to the emergence of, hopefully, the
reemergence of a democratic process.”
The International Crisis Group (ICG) has recommended gradual sanctions
on Pakistan similar to those imposed on Iran, e.g . slapping travel
bans on Pakistani military officers and seizing Pakistani military
assets abroad.
The process of painting Pakistan 's nuclear assets as pure evil lying
around waiting for some do-gooder to come in and ‘secure’ them has
reached unprecedented levels, with the U.S. media again depicting
Pakistan as a nation incapable of protecting its nuclear
installations. On 22 October, Jane Harman from the U.S. House
Intelligence panel gave the following statement: “I think the U.S.
would be wise – and I trust we are doing this – to have contingency
plans [to seize Pakistan’s nuclear assets], especially because should
[Musharraf] fall, there are nuclear weapons there.”
The American media has now begun discussing the possibility of
Pakistan breaking up and the possibility of new states of
‘Balochistan’ and ‘Pashtunistan’ being carved out of it.
Interestingly, one of the first acts of the shady Maulana of Swat
after capturing a few towns was to take down the Pakistani flag from
the top of state buildings and replacing them with his own party flag.
The ‘chatter’ about President Musharraf’s eminent fall has also
increased dramatically in the mainly American media, which has been
very generous in marketing theories about how Musharraf might
“disappear” or be “removed” from the scene. According to some
Pakistani analysts, this could be an attempt to prepare the public
opinion for a possible assassination of the Pakistani president.
Another worrying thing is how American officials are publicly
signaling to the Pakistanis that Mrs. Benazir Bhutto has their backing
as the next leader of the country. Such signals from Washington are
not only a kiss of death for any public leader in Pakistan , but the
Americans also know that their actions are inviting potential
assassins to target Mrs. Bhutto. If she is killed in this way, there
won’t be enough time to find the real culprit, but what’s certain is
that unprecedented international pressure will be placed on Islamabad
while everyone will use their local assets to create maximum internal
chaos in the country. A dress rehearsal of this scenario has already
taken place in October when no less than the U.N. Security Council
itself intervened to ask the international community to “assist” in
the investigations into the assassination attempt on Mrs. Bhutto on 18
October. This generous move was sponsored by the U.S . and,
interestingly, had no input from Pakistan which did not ask for help
in investigations in the first place.
Some Pakistani security analysts privately say that American ‘chatter’
about Musharraf or Bhutto getting killed is a serious matter that
can’t be easily dismissed. Getting Bhutto killed can generate the kind
of pressure that could result in permanently putting the Pakistani
military on a back foot, giving Washington enough room to push for
installing a new pliant leadership in Islamabad.
Having Musharraf killed isn’t a bad option either. The unknown
Islamists can always be blamed and the military will not be able to
put another soldier at the top, and circumstances will be created to
ensure that either Mrs. Bhutto or someone like her is eased into
power.
The Americans are very serious this time. They cannot let Pakistan
get out of their hands. They have been kicked out of Uzbekistan last
year, where they were maintaining bases. They are in trouble in
Afghanistan and Iraq. Iran continues to be a mess for them and Russia
and China are not making it any easier. Pakistan must be ‘secured’ at
all costs.
This is why most Pakistanis have never seen American diplomats in
Pakistan active like this before. And it’s not just the current U.S.
ambassador, who has added one more address to her other
most-frequently-visited address in Karachi, Mrs. Bhutto’s house. The
new address is the office of GEO, one of two news channels shut down
by Islamabad for not signing the mandatory code-of-conduct.
Thirty-eight other channels are operating and no one has censored the
newspapers. But never mind this. The Americans have developed a
‘thing’ for GEO. No solace of course for ARY, the other banned
channel.
Now there’s also one Bryan Hunt, the U.S. consul general in Lahore,
who wears the national Pakistani dress, the long shirt and baggy
trousers, and is moving around these days issuing tough warnings to
Islamabad and to the Pakistani government and to President Musharraf
to end emergency rule, resign as army chief and give Mrs. Bhutto
access to power.
PAKISTAN’S OPTIONS
So what should Pakistan do in the face of such a structured campaign
to bring Pakistan down on its knees and forcibly install a
pro-Washington administration in Islamabad ?
There is increasing talk in Islamabad these days about Pakistan’s new
tough stand in the face of this malicious campaign.
As a starter, Islamabad blew the wind out of the visit of Mr. John
Negroponte, the no. 2 man in the U.S. State Department, who came to
Pakistan last week “to deliver a tough message” to the Pakistani
president. Musharraf, to his credit, told him he won’t end emergency
rule until all objectives are achieved.
These objectives include:
Cleaning up our northern and western parts of the country of all
foreign operatives and their domestic pawns.
Ensuring that Washington 's plan for regime-change doesn’t succeed.
Purging the Pakistani media of all those elements that were willing or
unwilling accomplices in the plan to destabilize the country.
Musharraf has also told Washington publicly that “Pakistan is more
important than democracy or the constitution.” This is a bold
position. This kind of boldness would have served Musharraf a lot had
it come a little earlier. But even now, his media management team is
unable to make the most out of it.
Washington will not stand by watching as its plan for regime change
in Islamabad goes down the drain. In case the Americans insist on
interfering in Pakistani affairs, Islamabad , according to my sources,
is looking at some tough measures:
Cutting off oil supplies to U.S. military in Afghanistan . Pakistani
officials are already enraged at how Afghanistan has turned into a
staging ground for sabotage in Pakistan. If Islamabad continues to see
Washington acting as a bully, Pakistani officials are seriously
considering an announcement where Pakistan, for the first time since
October 2001, will deny the United States use of Pakistani soil and
air space to transport fuel to Afghanistan.
Reviewing Pakistan’s role in the war on terror. Islamabad needs to
fight terrorists on its border with Afghanistan. But our methods need
to be different to Washington’s when it comes to our domestic
extremists. This is where Islamabad parts ways with Washington.
Pakistani officials are conisdering the option of withdrawing from the
war on terror while maintining Pakistan’s own war against the
terrorists along Afghanistan’s border.
Talks with the Taliban. Pakistan has no quarrel with Afghanistan’s
Taliban. They are Kabul 's internal problem. But if reaching out to
Afghan Taliban’s Mullah Omar can have a positive impact on rebellious
Pakistani extremists, then this step should be taken. The South
Koreans can talk to the Taliban. Karzai has also called for talks with
them. It is time that Islamabad does the same. The Americans have been
telling everyone in the world that they have paid Pakistan $10 billion
dollars over the past five years. They might think this gives them the
right to decide Pakistan’s destiny. What they don’t tell the world is
how Pakistan 's help secured for them their biggest footprint ever in
energy-rich Central Asia .
If they forget, Islamabad can always remind them by giving them the
same treatment that Uzbekistan did last year.