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Pakistan Ditching China?
The new Pakistani government is not thrilled about the country’s longtime ally, China. Prime Minister Gilani has decided to downgrade Pakistani representation in this week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit. And our ambassador in Washington, a known ‘American enthusiast’, has given verbal instructions to Pakistani Foreign Office to lessen its fixation on China and focus more on India. His government undermined Pakistani participation in Beijing Olympics twice in the last four months. And we are still without a Pakistani ambassador in Beijing while our London and Washington embassies are run by strong supporters of Washington and London.
By AHMED QURAISHI
Tuesday, 26 August 2008.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—This is the first time that Pakistan does not have an ambassador in Beijing for several months now, which is an oddity. Washington and London were the first capitals where the Gilani government appointed ambassadors. That is supposedly understandable. The current government in Pakistan was possible only because of a political understanding – widely referred to in Islamabad as a ‘deal – which both capitals brokered with a weak and fading Mr. Musharraf.
But how China has slipped from the list of priorities of the Gilani government can be gauged from our expected participation this week in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit on Aug. 28. This is a Chinese and Russian dominated organization seen as a counterweight to U.S. influence in our region. In this first major foreign policy engagement for this government involving China, no senior politician from the Gilani administration will be representing Pakistan. Prime Minister Gilani has decided that, due to our pressing internal political situation, the advisor to the prime minister for national security – a former ambassador to Washington – will instead represent Islamabad. This will be the lowest Pakistani participation in SCO since its formation in 2001. It is true that Pakistan is still not a full member of the SCO. But Beijing is strongly advocating full membership for Islamabad and Moscow is more favorably inclined to go along than at any other time, putting aside Indian sensitivities.
Given how we are suffering from Washington’s destabilizing influence in our neighborhood, you would think we would have shown more enthusiasm for this week’s SCO summit. But this is not the case. What is interesting is that this attitude comes at the heel of several events in the past four months that have generated some concern among Pakistani Sinologists. This is a concern that has not turned to panic, not yet at least.
A couple of months ago, Dr. Shireen Mazari, a former head of a think tank funded by our Foreign Office, reported that our top diplomats received verbal ‘guidance’ from a well known Washington-based figure in the Gilani government to stop focusing too much on China and start a new policy of engagement with countries such as India and the United States. This could be a personal opinion or a general policy observation, and all elected governments have the right to review policies. But in China’s case, we have accumulated several bad examples recently that the subject merits a special discussion.
In April, a fresh Prime Minister Gilani refused to attend the Olympic Torch Relay ceremony as the torch passed through Islamabad on the pretext that President Musharraf was also attending.
Considering how western members of the International Olympic Committee refused to include Pakistan in the torch route and how Beijing stuck to Islamabad, the Apr. 16 incident in the Pakistani capital was certainly a ghastly show of lopsided priorities.
And then on Aug. 8, Pakistan’s participation at the level of President in China’s most important event of the century was scuttled because of Pakistani politics. You can be certain that our Chinese friends were not very impressed when we sent to Beijing a prime minister widely seen as ‘remote-controlled’ – as opposed to a ‘puppet’ – along with the teenage chairman of the ruling party. It didn’t quite give the impression that we attached a lot of importance to an important event for China. Overall, it would be an understatement to say that this has not been a good year so far for Sino-Pakistani ties.
The principals of the Gilani government must excuse the skeptics when things like this happen. After all, the government has shown a lot of enthusiasm in focusing on ties with the United States. Washington was the first real foreign engagement for Prime Minister Gilani. You can discount the Saudi visit. That was limited to a one-point agenda: Cheap oil. Certainly the government has shown a lot of interest in hiring the services of an ‘American enthusiast’ to be our ambassador in Washington, followed by appointing the last serving ambassador there as the new national security advisor to the prime minister.
This is a government tinged with a heavy American dose. That is fine since this is an important relationship for Islamabad. But in the process, China should not be sidelined.
Who will we be defending ourselves from on THIS September 6th?
Sunday, August 24, 2008
By
Zakintosh
For many years Pakistanis have observed September 6th as the National Defense Day (also dubbed Army Day), albeit with decreasing fervour. The decline in excitement, other than one that any joyous escape from school a holiday brings, has been caused, partially, from the passage of time from the 1965 war: most of the readers of this blog had not even been born then, while others now have a better understanding of the misadventure. Another factor, however, is also the growing disenchantment with, and opposition to, the political role of the Army.
This September 6th, again, if the Presidential Election takes place, the Army may be on many minds – or at least in the warped minds of those who continue to look upon it as the only possible political saviour. Let us hope, however, that politics is not on the Army’s mind – an oxymoron, some would argue – and General Kiyani (despite the warning bells that the letter quoted Ardeshir’s column today echoes) will continue to depoliticize the Army.
But, hey, there is such a thing as pushing someone too far! And we may be leaning too hard on him already.
President Zardari? asks the headline in today’s Dawn, announcing the acceptance of the proposal (to contest the presidential election) by arguably the most controversial figure Pakistan’s politics has ever seen.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) on Saturday formally named its Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari as its candidate for the office of the president.
“Being the party’s deputy secretary-general, I am pleased to announce that PPP Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari has accepted the will of the party to become Pakistan’s next president,” said the Leader of the House in the Senate, Mian Raza Rabbani, while announcing the decision of naming Zardari as the candidate for the office of the president.
The News, another national newspaper, featured a story yesterday, spelling out why many are afraid of such a possibility. Here’s how it ends:
Zardari’s nomination has generated a stir among the political, social, bureaucratic, and security circles of the capital. It would be for the first time that a single person would run the state, the government and all its organs, as well as the country’s biggest political party.
If elected, president Asif Ali Zardari will also be Chairman National Security Council, who will be armed with the authority to appoint the Chairman Joint Chief of Staff Committee, Chief of Army Staff, Chief of Air Staff, Chief of Naval Staff, provincial governors, Chief Election Commissioner, Attorney General, and the powers to dissolve the National Assembly and Provincial Assemblies under Article 58-2(b).
Compared to Musharraf, Zardari as president will be much more powerful as he will also control Pakistan’s biggest political party bequeathed to him by Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto along with all her political and monetary assets.
After having a hand-picked, “yes” prime minister, compliant judiciary, presidential powers under 17th Amendment and the biggest political party which would wait for his nod for any action, Zardari is set to become more powerful than Musharraf or any politician in Pakistan would ever have dreamt of.
[Aside: Does no one at The News know that a preposition is not something you end a sentence with?]
Dawn’s headline proved really disturbing for a dear friend, Tony Afzal, living in the USA. He was horrified enough to write a letter to the newspaper’s editor, suggesting things I wouldn’t suggest. I cannot quote it in full, since it has not yet been published – though he did send me a copy. This is what he asks all of us: As a people, have we now come to this? Are we all collectively deranged?
My short answer: Yes! (Based on my conviction that the majority is always wrong. After all, when everyone thinks the same, no one really thinks. And those that try to do so, loudly, get shafted!)
Source: http://www.kidvai.com/windmills/2008/08/who-will-we-be-defending-ourselves.html
A Report from NY Times
HOUSE OF GRAFT:
Tracing the Bhutto Millions –
A special report;
Bhutto Clan Leaves Trail of Corruption
By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: January 9, 1998
A decade after she led this impoverished nation from military rule to democracy, Benazir Bhutto is at the heart of a widening corruption inquiry that Pakistani investigators say has traced more than $100 million to foreign bank accounts and properties controlled by Ms. Bhutto’s family.
Starting from a cache of Bhutto family documents bought for $1 million from a shadowy intermediary, the investigators have detailed a pattern of secret payments by foreign companies that sought favors during Ms. Bhutto’s two terms as Prime Minister.
The documents leave uncertain the degree of involvement by Ms. Bhutto, a Harvard graduate whose rise to power in 1988 made her the first woman to lead a Muslim country. But they trace the pervasive role of her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, who turned his marriage to Ms. Bhutto into a source of virtually unchallengeable power.
In 1995, a leading French military contractor, Dassault Aviation, agreed to pay Mr. Zardari and a Pakistani partner $200 million for a $4 billion jet fighter deal that fell apart only when Ms. Bhutto’s Government was dismissed. In another deal, a leading Swiss company hired to curb customs fraud in Pakistan paid millions of dollars between 1994 and 1996 to offshore companies controlled by Mr. Zardari and Ms. Bhutto’s widowed mother, Nusrat.
In the largest single payment investigators have discovered, a gold bullion dealer in the Middle East was shown to have deposited at least $10 million into an account controlled by Mr. Zardari after the Bhutto Government gave him a monopoly on gold imports that sustained Pakistan’s jewelry industry. The money was deposited into a Citibank account in the United Arab Emirate of Dubai, one of several Citibank accounts for companies owned by Mr. Zardari.
Together, the documents provided an extraordinarily detailed look at high-level corruption in Pakistan, a nation so poor that perhaps 70 percent of its 130 million people are illiterate, and millions have no proper shelter, no schools, no hospitals, not even safe drinking water. During Ms. Bhutto’s five years in power, the economy became so enfeebled that she spent much of her time negotiating new foreign loans to stave off default on $62 billion in public debt.
A worldwide search for properties secretly bought by the Bhutto family is still in its early stages. But the inquiry has already found that Mr. Zardari went on a shopping spree in the mid-1990’s, purchasing among other things a $4 million, 355-acre estate south of London. In 1994 and 1995, he used a Swiss bank account and an American Express card to buy jewelry worth $660,000 — including $246,000 at Cartier Inc. and Bulgari Corp. in Beverly Hills, Calif., in barely a month.
In separate interviews in Karachi, Ms. Bhutto, 44, and Mr. Zardari, 42, declined to address specific questions about the Pakistani inquiry, which they dismissed as a political vendetta by Ms. Bhutto’s successor as Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif. In Karachi Central Prison, where he has been held for 14 months on charges of murdering Ms. Bhutto’s brother, Mr. Zardari described the corruption allegations as part of a ”meaningless game.” But he offered no challenge to the authenticity of the documents tracing some of his most lucrative deals.
Ms. Bhutto originally kindled wild enthusiasms in Pakistan with her populist politics, then suffered a heavy loss of support as the corruption allegations gained credence. In an interview at her fortresslike home set back from Karachi’s Arabian Sea beachfront, she was by turns tearful and defiant. ”Most of those documents are fabricated,” she said, ”and the stories that have been spun around them are absolutely wrong.”
But she refused to discuss any of the specific deals outlined in the documents, and did not explain how her husband had paid for his property and jewelry. Lamenting what she described as ”the irreparable damage done to my standing in the world” by the corruption inquiry, she said her family had inherited wealth, although not on the scale implied by tales of huge bank deposits and luxury properties overseas.
Courtesy and thanks: Washington Post
Beyond Musharraf
By Ahmed Rashid
Tuesday, August 19, 2008; Page A13
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The resignation of President Pervez Musharraf yesterday after nine years in office is a major victory for Pakistan’s long-battered and still fragile democratic forces. But particularly given the meltdown the country has endured in recent weeks, there are still many obstacles to effective civilian governance. Although the United States will expect things to change in a hurry, they are unlikely to do so right away.
Three of Pakistan’s past four military rulers have been driven from power by popular movements, but the politicians who followed the military all failed to take advantage of the people’s desire for democracy and economic development and were eventually forced out by the military on charges of corruption and incompetence.
The most pressing issues today involve the long-standing tension of Pakistan’s politics and the relationship between the civilian government and the military. The government is led by the Pakistan People’s Party, now run by Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, but his party governs through a complex coalition of parties.
The PPP’s main antagonist is former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, head of the Pakistan Muslim League-N, who never misses an opportunity to try to pull down the PPP, his longtime rival, rather than working with it to consolidate the few democratic gains the country has made.
Overthrown by Musharraf in a 1999 coup and humiliated by the army, Sharif rejects concessions to the army and offers no support to the war against Taliban extremists. Busy pandering to his right-wing supporters, he has little time for American demands.
Sharif believes that his popularity and the parliamentary seats he controls in the majority province of Punjab will eventually regain him the prime minister ship.
In the next few days, internal coalition battles will continue as key questions arise, including where Musharraf should live, whether impeachment should proceed, how the senior judges Musharraf dismissed last November should be restored to their offices and who should become president.
Sharif is taking a hard line, while Zardari wants to move slowly and not confront the army by further humiliating Musharraf, a former army chief.These power struggles within the coalition are magnified by the enormous mistrust that exists between the army and both parties. The army’s mistrust of the PPP has a nearly 40-year history, and the military dislikes Sharif.
In the past six months, the army and the coalition government have failed to work out a joint strategy to combat the Pakistani Taliban, which is swarming across northwestern Pakistan, or to prevent Taliban fighters from crossing the border and fighting in Afghanistan.
The army, which is not popular, wants the civilian government to take political responsibility for going after the extremists. Sharif has no intention of doing the army’s bidding, and Zardari has yet to hammer out a position that can garner coalition agreement. Meanwhile, the economy is in meltdown, with inflation running at 25 percent, but the government has not been able to lift investor confidence.
The mess that Musharraf leaves behind will haunt Pakistan and the world in the months ahead. The international community is likely to grow even more nervous about Pakistan as extremists become stronger and more audacious.
The government and the army are besieged by escalating U.S. and NATO threats that Pakistan must either help catch Osama bin Laden and do more to stop the Taliban’s offensives or face stepped-up U.S. bombing against the Taliban inside Pakistan.
Much of the fault for this situation lies with Musharraf’s aversion to democracy and his failure to capitalize on the opportunities offered by joining the Western alliance in the war against terrorism after Sept. 11. After the 2001 attacks, Musharraf received massive financial aid ($11.8 billion from Washington alone) and unstinting international political support — yet failed to use it for the common good.
He rigged his own reelection in 2002 and long disrupted attempts at a transition to a democracy. After millions of Pakistanis took to the streets last year, demanding the rule of law, Musharraf imposed a state of emergency. Under extreme public pressure, he was forced to rescind his measures and agreed to hold free and fair elections in February, in which his political supporters were trounced.
Meanwhile, Musharraf’s relationship with the West disintegrated as the Taliban gained ground in Afghanistan, using its bases in Pakistan. There was a Taliban blowback inside Pakistan as the Pakistani Pashtun tribesmen who protected bin Laden and the Afghan Taliban when they retreated to Pakistan in 2001 were themselves radicalized. They formed their own militias with their own agenda: to turn Pakistan into an Islamic Taliban-style state. In December, they assassinated the one person who could have pulled the country together — PPP leader Benazir Bhutto.
Most Pakistanis see the coalition government as the country’s last chance for democracy, and they want it to work. The army, the government and the international community have to work together so that Pakistan can start tackling its real problems.
Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist, is the author of “Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia.”
The Filth of Pakistani Politics
by
Asif Nawaz
The face of Pakistani politics today became more deformed than ever. Musharraf’s resignation comes as a prime example of a country that has, in its ONLY recent history focused on more on the past than the present or the future, and that shows in the country’s economic status, political climate, and global alliances.
A country of many failures, the present government has once again shown that blaming the predecessor is the way to go; rather than making the most of an opportunity to repair a nation full of civil, political, financial, class and ethnic differences, the government of the Pakistan People’s Party, coupled with the childish attitude of Nawaz Sharif, has today shown how any good of one’s past can be overshadowed by policial enemity.
The Fall of Musharraf
Rasul Bakhsh Rais
President Pervez Musharraf has departed, having resigned to escape the humiliation of impeachment. Yet another painful chapter of Pakistan’s political history has been closed, ending the political uncertainty the country has been facing for the past five months.
Why painful? It may be considered a polite expression for an era when the General-President overthrew an elected government to save his position as the Chief of Army Staff. At least in previous military interventions there was a political crisis and some kind of government breakdown. That was not the case on October 12, 1999.
The ruling party had a comfortable two-thirds majority in the National Assembly and all political parties with remarkable consensus had passed the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. Pakistan was on the road to democratic recovery but with the usual traits of autocracy that are embedded in the country’s political culture.
Musharraf came to power and ruled the country only as COAS, like his three predecessors. His uniform was his first line of defence and the army an instrument of self-empowerment and control. The day he doffed his uniform, he was no longer the master of his or the country’s fate.
Musharraf exits the Pakistani stage as storm clouds gather
By
Rich Bowdenon August 20, 2008 7:40 AM
Pakistan’s former leader Pervez Musharraf resigned yesterday in an emotional address to the nation ahead of impeachment proceedings brought by the country’s newly-resurgent Parliament. Musharraf dominated Pakistani politics for almost a decade and strode the world stage as one of the U.S.’s chief regional allies in the war against terrorism. However the euphoria expressed at the ousting of the one time strongman was tempered with the knowledge that Islamabad is likely to face a protracted power struggle to fill the vacuum.
Musharraf’s ascendancy was the catalyst that brought together the two main parties; the Pakistan Peoples Party and Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), though the two have traditionally been rivals throughout the country’s history. With the chief reason for the parties’ awkward and fragile coalition now gone, the country could face an uncertain, if not violent, political future.
The record of the two parties coalition since obtaining office in February is mixed and there have been squabbles over key issues such as immunity for Musharraf and the vexing question of whether to reinstate the judges ousted by Musharraf, an act which proved to be the tipping point for Musharraf in the eyes of the Pakistani public.
The Destabilization of Pakistan
The debate is heating up between those who favor and oppose sending more troops to Afghanistan. Put me in the latter camp – I cannot support escalation without first hearing a clear explanation of the strategic changes that would accompany the escalation, along with an explanation of how we’ll address issues of government and development sector corruption. In other words, I think that pumping in more troops without addressing the structural flaws of our approach will yield no results.And since we’re a long way away from solving those problems, I think we should hold off on troop increases.
Building an argument for or against more troops involves answering a number of questions. I’m only going to deal with one sub-point here,but it’s an important one: we need to define more carefully what political and social consequences escalation in Afghanistan might have for Pakistan.
One point that everyone on all sides of the debate loves to make is that x, y, or z maneuver by the US might ‘destabilize Pakistan.’ I think we’re reaching a point where we can talk more precisely about what that means. It’s easy to talk about ‘destabilization’ – it’s a nice buzzword that makes you sound authoritative, and an intimidating prospect to scare your audience or your opponents with. It’s a bogeyman. I myself have used it that way in the past. Admittedly,’destabilization‘ can be shorthand for a range of phenomena that are understood by the parties involved in a debate, but I think in this case we need to bring our use of the word back to more concrete details. The debate about Afghanistan/Pakistan needs to be accessible to as many Americans as possible.
Pakistan Politics on the Brink Again:
By Shuja Nawaz
August 19th, 2008
As Pakistan lurches into another paroxysm of power politics with the threatened impeachment and expected resignation of President Pervez Musharraf, the post-Musharraf picture is not as clear or rosy as the authors of this move may want it to be. The unelected leaders of the coalition government of the Pakistan Peoples’ Party and the Pakistan Muslim League (N), Messrs. Asif Ali Zardari and M. Nawaz Sharif respectively may yet find themselves facing a political mess even after Musharraf is gone. There is much that may yet split their on-again, off-again alliance and bring the country to the edge of a new political crisis. In the meantime, the country is sliding into economic chaos and there is no sign that the government has a credible strategy to cope with the impending disaster.
After two weeks of travel and conversations with citizens, civil leaders, military officials, and journalists in Pakistan, a complex picture emerges: a country beset by serious economic woes, a growing insurgency, and a fractured polity. In the shadows sits the powerful Pakistan army, the historical arbiter of Pakistani politics, headed by a publicly inscrutable but privately engaged and engaging new chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.
Welcome To CIA-Sponsored Democracy
President Musharraf leaves office alone, besieged and abandoned. He is not leaving the country into strong hands. In fact, in the hands of the most the corrupt, unscrupulous and dangerous criminals this country ever produced. The regime-change game which CIA had initiated about one year ago finally succeeds. Musharraf’s removal is only a milestone in the larger CIA game of taking over Pakistan’s premier intelligence service, the ISI. Now another battle will begin for the control of power centers in Islamabad. Judges will not be restored and governance will not improve. Fasten your seat belts for some very bumpy ride in the coming days. The present leadership is not just incompetent; they are outright dangerous for the country. Now they cannot blame Musharraf for their failures and treasons and army would be watching their moves carefully.
By ZAID HAMID
Monday, 18 August 2008.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—President Musharraf finally resigns; ill advised, surrounded and abandoned; he chose to take the path of least resistance. He tried to be dignified in defeat and recounted his victories and achievements but the sorry state is that his legacy is Zardari, NRO and a corrupt weak government in Islamabad with a country literally gone to dogs!
He is not leaving the country into strong hands, in fact in the hands of most corrupt, unscrupulous and dangerous criminals this country has ever produced. The regime change game which CIA had initiated about one year ago finally succeeds though his resignation remains only a milestone in the larger CIA game of taking over Pakistan’s premier intelligence service ISI.
The CIA sponsored, PPP executed, U.S. backed attempted coup against ISI had begun to unfold a few weeks back with a new ruthless cut throat political strategy and a new target designation. This plan has the following landmarks to be achieved in rapid succession:
- Removal of President Musharraf.
- Appointment of Mr. Zardari or his man as President.
- Bringing ISI again under Ministry of Interior.
- Complete take over of Pakistan’s security establishment by CIA.
There is no doubt that both U.S. and Britain are closely monitoring the moves of the army as the Army Chief is also a major hurdle in U.S. plans to bring ISI under MoI. With all the political parties in U.S. pocket, the army and the ISI are the next targets once the President has been annihilated.
Mr. Musharraf could have done better when he had decided to leave. He could have restored the judges to make life miserable for Zardari. He could have revoked the NRO to prevent Zardari from becoming the most powerful man in the country. He did neither and now Zardari is ecstatic and already planning to place his man, women or himself in the President house.
It is scavenging to the core by the political vultures and hyenas and now another battle will begin for the control of power centers in Islamabad. Judges will not be restored and governance will not improve. Fasten your seat belts for some very bumpy ride in the coming days. The present leadership is not just incompetent; they are outright dangerous for the country. Now they cannot blame Musharraf for their failures and treasons and army would be watching their moves carefully.
Welcome to CIA sponsored democracy.
This column is extracted from a situation report released by BRASSTACKS, a security and defense analysis think tank based in Islamabad. Mr. Zaid Hamid is its Founding Consultant. He can be reached at info@brasstacks.biz
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