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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.
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.
Moakhza
U.S. Is Lying !
No Chance Of Another 9/11 From Pakistani Tribal Areas
The entire U.S. policy is focused on ensuring a head-on collision between the Pashtun tribes of the tribal area and the federal army of Pakistan. That would cause such a chaos and anarchy in the mainland through reactionary terrorism that Pakistan would be given the status of a failed state clearing the way for a massive invasion of the country to ‘secure’ the nuke assets to prevent them from falling into the ‘wrong’ hands.
By
ZAID HAMID
Tuesday, 22 July 2008.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—
‘Pakistan, for example, had no enemies in the Taliban or al Qaeda until (the Pakistani leader) made them such at our behest. Likewise, there could have been no better Afghan government for Pakistan than the Taliban regime, and yet (the Pakistani leader) helped America destroy it and replace it with the Karzai regime, a government that has allowed an enormous increase in the Indian presence in Afghanistan. ‘To date, Pakistan has lost more soldiers killed and wounded than the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan. More dangerously, the offensives are stoking the fires of a potential civil war between Islamabad and the Pashtun tribes that dominate much of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. This situation is heaven-sent for Pakistan’s enemies, the Karzai regime, and India, to fuel Pashtun irredentism. ‘
Writing the above in the Washington Times on 7 April 2006, a CIA insider, Michael Scheuer, admits the reality of the situation and the blunders of the Pakistan government as well as threats which the U.S. war on terror has brought for Pakistan from Afghan and Indian sides.
“Pakistan in 2015. Pakistan, our conferees concluded, will not recover easily from decades of political and economic mismanagement, divisive politics, lawlessness, corruption and ethnic friction. Nascent democratic reforms will produce little change in the face of opposition from an entrenched political elite and radical Islamic parties. Further domestic decline would benefit Islamic political activists, who may significantly increase their role in national politics and alter the makeup and cohesion of the military—once Pakistan’s most capable institution. In a climate of continuing domestic turmoil, the central government’s control probably will be reduced to the Punjabi heartland and the economic hub of Karachi.”
From NIC, http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_globaltrend2015.html (U.S. government think tank plans to truncate Pakistan by 2015. the analysis is stunningly in line with proposed new maps below for the Middle East released by U.S. armed forces journal earlier).
We have no doubt in our mind that U.S. does have almost identical plans for Pakistan in the same way that it collaborated with the Indians directly to dismember Pakistan in 1971. The way U.S. is sponsoring the Pashtun sub-nationalist group ANP, which happens to rule NWFP these days, and they way U.S. is supporting Balochistan Liberation Army and has a very suspicious relationship with Mr. Zardari and Mr. Altaf Hussain, we remain seriously concerned that another game plan to dismember Pakistan is already on the roll.
Mushie Ustaad !
What a shameful last three days we’ve had. The media fabricated the story of Musharraf’s departure in a plane to ‘a neighboring country.’ The sad thing is that the rest of the good media is going to suffer when our politicians lead us to the next military takeover. Friends of Pakistan used to wonder why we’re so suicidal. Now they wonder why we’ve also reduced ourselves to a joke. This is the truth: Nawaz Sharif and the Musharraf-hating gang are getting desperate. Chances of taking revenge from Musharraf by using the hapless ex-CJ have all but receded. Zardari has cleverly got them mired in a 62-point bill that could take months if not years to materialize. Now they’re trying to play with the military. They tried once and got burned. Now they are trying again. This time there will be no U.S. president or Saudi crown prince to the rescue. My advice: Stop playing with fire.
By HUMAYUN GAUHAR
Monday, 2 June 2008.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—One could concoct a tale out of anything. Here’s one.
The president explained to me the other day the sort of generator or UPS I should put in my house. How could a president know such things? Conclusion: He must be thinking of moving to his private home soon and is therefore studying alternative electric supply options. Scoop!
What a shameful last three days we’ve had. Our friends were wondering why we’re so suicidal. Now they wonder why we’ve also reduced ourselves to a joke. A daily comic that passes for a newspaper and the comic TV channel associated with it deliberately started the rumor last Thursday that President Musharraf would be leaving in hours.
It ran a ticker in its UK broadcast that the president was under “protective custody” when he was actually hosting a dinner at which the army chief was also present.
America: Dubious Ally Or Outright Enemy?
Have our political and military elites lost the will to fight? Where is the befitting response? Our government, and our military, has reduced us to a laughingstock – a joke of a nation that can be pushed around. The point is, if our military is unwilling or unable to fight those who violate our sovereignty and kill our people, then what is the purpose of continuing to beef up and support this expensive organization?
By Shireen M. Mazari
Wednesday, June 18, 2008.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—What have we been reduced to as a result of our successive leaderships’ kowtowing to the U.S. post-9/11? What many of us had feared and written about at the time seems to have come true — be it the
growing U.S. intrusions into our territory or the periodic diatribes from the U.S. against Dr A.Q. Khan whenever they feel Pakistan needs to be put under pressure. However, nothing reflects our state’s sovereign bankruptcy as much as the audacious threats issued by Afghanistan’s Karzai of sending in his Afghan Army into Pakistan to take out “militants” and “terrorists.”
Here is a man who barely has power in his own capital, Kabul, and has hundreds of occupation forces from the
U.S. and NATO — not to mention some Arab contingents from the Gulf states — and he is actually threatening Pakistan, a country with a massive conventional military, and nuclear capability to boot.
Herein lies the irony of Pakistan’s predicament post-9/11. Our military seems to have no stomach for fighting the violations of our sovereignty by the U.S. and its allies. That has emboldened the U.S. and they now feel they can target the Pakistani security forces directly — as they did in March 2008 in Bajaur, and more recently last week in
the Mohmand Agency which left 11 FC men dead, apart from the civilians that are a constant target of U.S. and NATO forces — especially as their frustration has grown over their lack of success in Afghanistan.
Since the war began in Afghanistan, one has seen only whimpers of protest from the Pakistani military and the government in response to brazen attacks on Pakistani soil by U.S./NATO forces in which many innocent Pakistani civilians have died. Sheltering behind these forces are the ragtag members of the “Afghan Army” — which Karzai now wants to send into Pakistan! Karzai, whose security forces stood helpless in the face of a massive prison break, actually thinks the Pakistani military is so weak that the same ineffectual security forces can simply march into our country and carry out military actions against our people.
Our government, and our military, has reduced us to a laughingstock – a joke of a nation that can be pushed around militarily by all and sundry. The point is, if our military is unwilling or unable to fight those who violate our sovereignty and kill our people, then what is the purpose of continuing to beef up and support this expensive
organization? Here we were thinking our investment in nuclear weapons and updating of conventional weapon systems would ensure that our borders were secure and any military threat from anywhere would be dealt with effectively by the Pakistan military. Yet nothing of the sort has happened. Instead, we continue to be subject to U.S. military attacks as and when they choose. From all accounts, they do not bother to inform us either until after the event. And all we do is whimper a few protests.
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