New
Delhi, 10 November 2002
Hitler
had said he would win the war and Analysts had predicted OIL WOULD
WIN THE WAR and it came to pass. USA has eyes on the Central Asian
region for its oil, and now the war on Iraq is for oil too. USA
needs Pakistan but in the scenario of Muslims hating America (Thomas
Friedman calls it Axis of Envy) and Americans hating Muslims (Even
Lady Dianas mother used foul language against a Muslim), the
situation is becoming very volatile, and with VHP speaking openly on
that issue India is being watched.
In
this confused state of affairs Pakistan and India with 120 million
Muslims need to cooperate to use the Oil that USA wants to flow
through Pakistan, but that is an impossibility. The new terror
situation world over and in Kashmir will get worse before it gets
better. Now comes Arnaud de Borchgrave to tell us more. The extract
below summarises what we had been reporting. When it comes from
Borchgrave it is more alarming and jarring. A white man is saying
it.
Quote
ISI's
role in supplying North Korea with nuclear know-how for its missile
warheads in return for North Korean missile technology for
Pakistan's nuclear delivery vehicles had been a closely guarded
state secret. So when the New York Times broke the story, it was yet
another awkward pause in the make-believe world of a PakU.S.
alliance.
The
chief of the North Korean Air Force has been a frequent visitor to
Islamabad since 9/11. He stays at the Marriott Hotel and doesn't
even bother to conceal his identity; he wears his uniform.
Scanning
editorials from Buenos Aires to Bombay, it is hard to find anyone
who believes war on Iraq has anything to do with the war on terror.
They concluded months ago what Forbes headlined in its Oct. 28 issue
BOMB BAGHDAD, HIT OPEC - with this explanation: "Defeating
Saddam means opening up Iraq's oil reserves. Bad news for oil
producers and good news for everyone else." Unquote
TALIBAN
REVIVES IN PAKISTAN, AFGHANISTAN
Arnaud
de Borchgrave
One
of Pakistan's most notorious homegrown terrorists was elected to
parliament from prison.
As
Azam Tariq emerged from confinement a free man, he stepped into a
limo and was driven away by his own armed guards. His pro-Taliban,
pro-al-Qaeda outlawed party, Sipah-e-Sahaba (Guardians of the
Friends of the Prophet), was one of five extremist groups banned by
President Pervez Musharraf last January as he tried to dulcify U.S.
concerns. The Pakistani police blame Tariq's Guardians, the
country's most violent group, for some 400 killings in the last year
alone.
The
U.S. also bustled Musharraf on free elections. The unanticipated
result was the emergence of a coalition of six politico-religious
extremist parties as the indispensable partner in a national
government.
The
Muttahida Majlis Amal (MMA, or United Action Council) is led by
Fazul-ur-Rehman, a fiery antediluvian demagogue, friend of both
Mullah Mohammed Omar, the former Taliban leader, and the world's
most wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden.
Rehman
suddenly became the other two major political factions' choice for
Prime Minister. His campaign appearances were festooned with "Osama
bin Laden the Liberator" and "U.S. Go Home" posters
and banners.
One
of the Bush administration's ranking national security officials
confided privately, "better to have the crazies in than out of
government."
The
U.S. State Department praised the Pakistani elections as "an
important milestone in the ongoing transition to democracy."
Apparently unbeknownst to DoS, democracy was the big loser in
Pakistan. So much for the idea of free elections in a Muslim country
with a population of 145 million that is over half illiterate.
'Ally'
To call Pakistan an ally in the war against terrorism has become an
oxymoron. Rehman and his cohort Sami ul-Haq were the tutors to most
of Taliban's top leadership. Two years ago, Mullah Omar and Osama
bin Laden delivered joint commencement addresses at the University
for the Education of Truth - one of Pakistan's principal madrassas
in the township of Khattak near Peshawar. Now Taliban cadres
are free again to come and go into Afghanistan as they please
without fear of arrest.
Because
the Oct. 10 elections also gave control of the regional governments
of two of Pakistan's four provinces Northwest Frontier
Province and Baluchistan - to those who guard the friends of the
prophet. The entire length of the Pak-Afghan frontier is now once
again the dominion of anti-American religious extremists. From the
provincial capitals of Peshawar and Quetta, they will run police
forces, border guards and paramilitary scouts. Sharia law will be
strictly enforced.
Everything
appears to be in place for a rebirth of Taliban - on both sides of
the border.
In
Afghanistan, letters have been found tacked to trees urging an
uprising against American "occupation" forces that have
made "our Afghan sisters their servants and slaves."
Several girls schools have been attacked, two by rocket-propelled
grenades. Religious conservatives are still the law outside of
Kabul.
Warlords
use the Sharia and opium and heroin smuggling to buy weapons and
consolidate their hold. Opium production, banned by Taliban in 2000,
was down to 185 tons last year. This year, opium is expected to
yield 3,500 tons, on its way up to peak production of 5,000 tons in
1999. "Afghan brown sugar" is the country's only cash crop
that doesn't require much water, a boon in a country that has
suffered from drought for four consecutive years.
Taliban's
infamous Ministry for the Protection of Virtue and the Prevention of
Vice still holds sway in distant provinces. In Kabul, Foreign
Minister Dr. Abdullah says the Karzai government is losing
credibility because little of the $1.8 billion in emergency
reconstruction aid pledged in Tokyo last January for 2002 by some 60
nations and 20 international organizations has made it into the
country, let alone the $4.5 billion through 2007.
The man who engineered the victory of Pakistan's fundamentalist
parties was Hamid Gul, a retired former head of the Inter-Services
Intelligence agency (ISI) who acted as "strategic adviser"
to MMA. Gul's reward: a Senate seat.
Some
300 ISI officers who had been working with Taliban prior to 9/11 and
were transferred to regular army units have now been returned to the
intelligence agency. NWFP and Baluchistan are once again privileged
sanctuaries for al-Qaeda - a clear and present danger for president
Bush's war on terror.
The
unholy nexus between Musharraf, the mullahs and the terrorists was
clearly not the result the president had anticipated. But there is
little doubt it was the key objective of Gul and his ISI cronies.
The two dozen arrests of al-Qaeda types in Pakistan were the result
of FBI coordination with the Interior Ministry, not ISI.
By
keeping Pakistan's two most prominent political leaders -- Benazir
Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif out of the political contest and in
exile abroad, Musharraf ensured major extremist gains (from 5
percent to 20 percent; from two seats in the old parliament to 60)
as well as 116 seats for the "king's party," PML-QA
(Pakistan Muslim League-Qaid-e-Azam), where retired army friends and
ISI officers were recruited to run. This pro-Musharraf spin-off of
Sharif's PML scored the largest gain of any party.
If
the U.S. goes to war against Iraq, Pakistan may well go the way of
Yugoslavia. It could easily blow into four deadly parts and where
the country's nuclear arsenal would wind up is anyone's guess.
Musharraf
is not an Islamist, but a number of jealous, ambitious generals are.
The president has survived six assassination plots. In the event of
Musharraf's demise, ISI would play a major role in the struggle for
succession.
Arming
North Korea ISI's role in supplying North Korea with nuclear
know-how for its missile warheads in return for North Korean missile
technology for Pakistan's
nuclear delivery vehicles had been a closely guarded state secret.
So when the New York Times broke the story, it was yet another
awkward pause in the make-believe world of a Pak-U.S. alliance.
The
chief of the North Korean Air Force has been a frequent visitor to
Islamabad since 9/11. He stays at the Marriott Hotel and doesn't
even bother to conceal his identity; he wears his uniform.
Scanning
editorials from Buenos Aires to Bombay, it is hard to find anyone
who believes war on Iraq has anything to do with the war on terror.
They concluded months ago what Forbes headlined in its Oct. 28 issue
BOMB BAGHDAD, HIT OPEC with this explanation:
"Defeating Saddam means opening up Iraq's oil reserves. Bad
news for oil producers and good news for everyone else."
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