There is something tragically wrong when the distress of almost 10 million people is overshadowed by a pair of celebrated egos. No doubt, despite their recent sniping, Sean Penn and Wyclef Jean both mean to do well by Haiti, but when a columnist feels it just to write that "Wyclef Jean gave indispensable world attention to Haiti's incredible misfortune" one wonders what, in this age of international satellite television, does it take to arouse compassion? Are people still starving in Karachi because there is no Busta Rhymes to take up the cause of Pakistan?
Beyond what it says about our media/infotainment complex, this 21st century phenomenon points to the ineptitude, if not utter indifference, of our collective governments and institutions. Like New Orleans, Haiti's pain continues largely forgotten and those on the ground fear that the worse is yet to come.
Aid Fatigue?
It is almost impossible to believe but despite the horrendous images that followed the earthquake, James Dobbins, a former U.S. special envoy to Haiti and director of the RAND International Security and Defense Policy Center claimed surprise at the scale of the damage.
"We (were) also somewhat surprised at the Haitian and international response. — so little of the rubble has been cleared, and so few of the basic decisions have been made."
It's hard to blame the Haitian government when you consider all the broken promises. As Jean Renald Clerisme, a presidential adviser, explained: "the Haitian government hasn't received the money it was promised by the donors, which it would need to buy land and reconstruct. 'At a big donors' meeting in New York, we were promised $10bn, but we haven't received even 2% of this money?"
So while the celebrities squabble and consume our attention, the suffering Haitian people are left to hold their breath and hope for the best.
Showing posts with label Pakistan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pakistan. Show all posts
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Friday, April 10, 2009
An Almighty Mess
Ronald Reagan's ascent to the presidency was the CIA's final payback to Jimmy Carter. Carter had doomed his presidency by having the temerity to suggest that they act within the boundaries set by Congress and the White House.
If Carter was naive, Reagan was a Hollywood rube. The extent of his understanding of the intelligence services amounted to what he'd seen in the movies. Nevertheless Reagan pledged to untie the agency's hands and appointed his campaign manager Bill Casey as director. Casey shared the view of his hero Wild Bill Donovan that the CIA's mission was to be devious, global and totalitarian. Unfortunately it appears Casey did not also stress that it should be prudent or intelligent.
Nowhere has the legacy of the Reagan caused more damage than in Central Asia. No today we learn that the Pashtun under the banner of the reconstituted "Taleban" are poised to takeover Islamabad. I do not need to elaborate on the gravity for Pakistan should the fighters succeed.
For years Pakistani officials have been urging Nato to accept the Taliban in Afghanistan and work towards building a new coalition government in Kabul that would exclude Hamid Karzai. To appreciate the wisdom of that proposition it is vital to understand that there is a rift in the Pashtuns vis a vis the Taliban who have come to realize how they have been cynically exploited by both Pakistan and the Anglo/Americans.
The Pakistan-based Taliban represents that new movement, but its roots are old. These roots can be found in the isolation of the tribal areas and in the rupture of tradition caused by the import of a new Islamist ideology in the 1980s when Reagan allowed the Saudis to arm and indoctrinate the tribesmen in waging jihad against the Soviets.
According to Pashtun nationalist, Afrasiab Khattak, as many as 500,000 young men were thus socialized during the Afghan wars. Overwhelmingly Pashtun, they were bound by tribal codes of honor, loyalty and revenge. But, uprooted from their villages, they were also susceptible to new idioms of Islam, whether the Deobandi strain peddled by the Pakistani madrassas or the austere Wahhabism of the Saudi Arabians and other “Afghan Arabs” who had come to fight the Soviets.
For the first 50 years of Pakistan’s existence, the government’s policy toward the FATA was the same as that of the British Raj. Tribal leaders, or maliks, were granted semi-autonomous powers in exchange for fealty to the crown or, post-independence, the regime. In return for recognizing the British-drawn Durand Line as Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, the maliks were granted access to their tribal lands.
For the last 30 years, FATA’s isolation has served another purpose: The state has used the region as the launching pad for Pakistan-inspired insurgencies in Afghanistan, with the first coming after the communist coup in Kabul in 1978.
Fueled by CIA and Saudi money, but engineered by Pakistan’s premier Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) directorate, the militias incubated in the tribal areas became national, regional and ultimately global Islamist movements, of which al-Qaeda is only the most notorious. Amidst penury grew a war economy driven by opium, guns and God, while jihad was first taught, then waged, by generations of young men, dislocated and orphaned in Afghan refugee camps, but schooled in madrassas allied to one or another of Pakistan’s Islamist parties or sponsored by states like Saudi Arabia.
Pakistan’s original motive for planting this “volcano on both sides of the border” was as simple as it was myopic, says Khattak. Regionally, the regime of Gen. Zia ul Haq viewed the tribal areas as Pakistan’s bridge to a client state in Afghanistan, supplying the “strategic depth” necessary for resisting India, the “external” enemy to the east. Domestically, the socialization of so many in political Islam would produce an endless stream of foot soldiers for jihad. They, in turn, could be mobilized against the demand for Pashtunistan, the “internal” enemy.
What Zia and Reagan did not foresee was that once the Russians withdrew, some fighters would hand back their power but others like Mullah Omar, would not. They said, ‘We are the ones who defeated the Russians, not the earls.’ (This is why many Pashtun elders deserted the Taliban when it came to power and supported the American invasion -- it was seen as a restoration of the old tribal order.)
This is what is happening now on the Pakistan side of the border. The younger tribesmen ask: "why was it jihad to resist the Russians, but now it is terrorism to resist the Americans?’ Why not indeed when they have made such an almighty mess.
If Carter was naive, Reagan was a Hollywood rube. The extent of his understanding of the intelligence services amounted to what he'd seen in the movies. Nevertheless Reagan pledged to untie the agency's hands and appointed his campaign manager Bill Casey as director. Casey shared the view of his hero Wild Bill Donovan that the CIA's mission was to be devious, global and totalitarian. Unfortunately it appears Casey did not also stress that it should be prudent or intelligent.
Nowhere has the legacy of the Reagan caused more damage than in Central Asia. No today we learn that the Pashtun under the banner of the reconstituted "Taleban" are poised to takeover Islamabad. I do not need to elaborate on the gravity for Pakistan should the fighters succeed.
For years Pakistani officials have been urging Nato to accept the Taliban in Afghanistan and work towards building a new coalition government in Kabul that would exclude Hamid Karzai. To appreciate the wisdom of that proposition it is vital to understand that there is a rift in the Pashtuns vis a vis the Taliban who have come to realize how they have been cynically exploited by both Pakistan and the Anglo/Americans.
The Pakistan-based Taliban represents that new movement, but its roots are old. These roots can be found in the isolation of the tribal areas and in the rupture of tradition caused by the import of a new Islamist ideology in the 1980s when Reagan allowed the Saudis to arm and indoctrinate the tribesmen in waging jihad against the Soviets.
According to Pashtun nationalist, Afrasiab Khattak, as many as 500,000 young men were thus socialized during the Afghan wars. Overwhelmingly Pashtun, they were bound by tribal codes of honor, loyalty and revenge. But, uprooted from their villages, they were also susceptible to new idioms of Islam, whether the Deobandi strain peddled by the Pakistani madrassas or the austere Wahhabism of the Saudi Arabians and other “Afghan Arabs” who had come to fight the Soviets.
For the first 50 years of Pakistan’s existence, the government’s policy toward the FATA was the same as that of the British Raj. Tribal leaders, or maliks, were granted semi-autonomous powers in exchange for fealty to the crown or, post-independence, the regime. In return for recognizing the British-drawn Durand Line as Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, the maliks were granted access to their tribal lands.
For the last 30 years, FATA’s isolation has served another purpose: The state has used the region as the launching pad for Pakistan-inspired insurgencies in Afghanistan, with the first coming after the communist coup in Kabul in 1978.
Fueled by CIA and Saudi money, but engineered by Pakistan’s premier Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) directorate, the militias incubated in the tribal areas became national, regional and ultimately global Islamist movements, of which al-Qaeda is only the most notorious. Amidst penury grew a war economy driven by opium, guns and God, while jihad was first taught, then waged, by generations of young men, dislocated and orphaned in Afghan refugee camps, but schooled in madrassas allied to one or another of Pakistan’s Islamist parties or sponsored by states like Saudi Arabia.
Pakistan’s original motive for planting this “volcano on both sides of the border” was as simple as it was myopic, says Khattak. Regionally, the regime of Gen. Zia ul Haq viewed the tribal areas as Pakistan’s bridge to a client state in Afghanistan, supplying the “strategic depth” necessary for resisting India, the “external” enemy to the east. Domestically, the socialization of so many in political Islam would produce an endless stream of foot soldiers for jihad. They, in turn, could be mobilized against the demand for Pashtunistan, the “internal” enemy.
What Zia and Reagan did not foresee was that once the Russians withdrew, some fighters would hand back their power but others like Mullah Omar, would not. They said, ‘We are the ones who defeated the Russians, not the earls.’ (This is why many Pashtun elders deserted the Taliban when it came to power and supported the American invasion -- it was seen as a restoration of the old tribal order.)
This is what is happening now on the Pakistan side of the border. The younger tribesmen ask: "why was it jihad to resist the Russians, but now it is terrorism to resist the Americans?’ Why not indeed when they have made such an almighty mess.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Obama's Oxymorons
"You Americans are Crazy"-Ahmed Shah Massoud
In "Legacy of Ashes, a History of the CIA," Tim Weiner exposes how through an astonishing combination of arrogance, incompetence and criminal deceit American intelligence agencies have been masterful at creating enemies and wreaking chaos.
In one chapter Weiner describes how CIA station-chiefs in Latin America would regularly harrass their local hires, appropriate govt. funds and run "counternarcotics" operations which saw millions of dollars worth of illegal drugs funneled to Miami streets. Known torturers and criminals were frequently discovered on secret CIA payrolls. But perhaps no intelligence blunder will ever rival the mayhem that has been foisted upon half the world as a result of America's boneheaded actions in Afghanistan.
In their zeal to destroy the Soviet Union, during the Carter and Reagan presidencies the CIA and other US intelligence agencies made a Faustian bargain with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) along with Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Department, and a myriad of Afghan warlords to help the Islamists desperate to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan.
Afraid that overt U.S. action might lead to a superpower clash and WW III the CIA conspired to remain the invisible puppet master and placed responsibility for the covert operation in Pakistan’s hands. Even the most cursory knowledge of that country's unstable beginnings and fractious politics should have made it clear this was a truly bad idea. The rest, as they say, is history.
Obama seems to share the neocon delusion that even now that the entire region has been destabilized the genie can somehow be put back in its bottle and the riled-up hornets pacified by force. As the increasing eruptions of murder and violence in Pakistan attest I strongly suggest he ignore the oxymorons called America's "military intelligence" and think again.
In "Legacy of Ashes, a History of the CIA," Tim Weiner exposes how through an astonishing combination of arrogance, incompetence and criminal deceit American intelligence agencies have been masterful at creating enemies and wreaking chaos.
In one chapter Weiner describes how CIA station-chiefs in Latin America would regularly harrass their local hires, appropriate govt. funds and run "counternarcotics" operations which saw millions of dollars worth of illegal drugs funneled to Miami streets. Known torturers and criminals were frequently discovered on secret CIA payrolls. But perhaps no intelligence blunder will ever rival the mayhem that has been foisted upon half the world as a result of America's boneheaded actions in Afghanistan.
In their zeal to destroy the Soviet Union, during the Carter and Reagan presidencies the CIA and other US intelligence agencies made a Faustian bargain with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) along with Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Department, and a myriad of Afghan warlords to help the Islamists desperate to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan.
Afraid that overt U.S. action might lead to a superpower clash and WW III the CIA conspired to remain the invisible puppet master and placed responsibility for the covert operation in Pakistan’s hands. Even the most cursory knowledge of that country's unstable beginnings and fractious politics should have made it clear this was a truly bad idea. The rest, as they say, is history.
Obama seems to share the neocon delusion that even now that the entire region has been destabilized the genie can somehow be put back in its bottle and the riled-up hornets pacified by force. As the increasing eruptions of murder and violence in Pakistan attest I strongly suggest he ignore the oxymorons called America's "military intelligence" and think again.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Bomb, Bomb... Pakistan?
"In today's world, trying to pin down the provenance of a terrorist strike and isolate it within the borders of a single nation state, is very much like trying to pin down the provenance of corporate money. It's almost impossible."
--Arundhati Roy
So it's official. Thanks to the Mumbai massacre (did you know that Westerners were also targets!) India is now firmly aligned with the neocon camp. President Obama is being left little choice but to continue the disastrous Afghanistan war now that Pakistan has been cynically implicated in the devastating terrorist attack.
Whether India with over 150 million Muslims in their population has the stomach for a lengthy Afghanistan occupation will no doubt depend on the concessions they can demand from Washington. With the fastest growing population in the world in a country with already 1 billion people India sees itself as the future ITT giant. One wonders whether a wish to counter India's ambitions lies behind Governor Napolitano, Obama's pick for the Dept. of Homeland Security plan to increase the Asian brain drain by raising the H-1B cap on high tech visas.
As I have conjectured-- the difference between the neocons and the rest of the U.S. foreign policy establishment centers around tactics rather than strategic policy. Thus it came as no great surprise that a governor from Arizona was pegged to head Homeland Security given that state's long and curious ties to international terrorism.
"British Terror Suspect Allegedly Tried to Set Up Training Camp In Arizona"
"Arizona Was Home to bin Laden ''Sleeper Cell'' The Arizona Republic, September 28, 2001"
Nor was I shocked that "bomb, bomb John McCain" jumped on a plane to India and then left to warn the Pakistanis that they had better play along with the latest phase in the "War on Terror" otherwise known as the battle for control of the planet's gas and oil. As far as the neocons are concerned-- transparent threats are an imperial power's finest form of diplomacy.
[Recalling Phase 1: Don't forget Georgia!
"The Russians have every reason to be worried" about US intentions," says Thomas Stauffer, an energy strategist and former Harvard professor in Washington. "The only geopolitical logic I can see [to long-term US moves]," Stauffer adds, "is that we want to get a certain amount of space on the checkerboard, with which we can negotiate with the Russians."
Such considerations haven't escaped notice in Washington, where US Secretary of State Colin Powell last December said that Kazakhstan's oil was becoming of "critical importance."
And "Caspian reserves could be critical to future global energy supply," notes an analysis earlier this month by the respected, London-based Jane's Foreign Report. "This is in line with the doctrine of 'full-spectrum dominance' that now seems to govern American foreign policy and is manifesting itself in the Caucasus and Central Asia," the report said.
That some in Washington want to keep US troops in Central Asia beyond the Afghanistan campaign "accentuates the fact that the war on terrorism is horribly complicated, and risks being lost by being overloaded with other agendas," Lieven adds. "One problem is that some in the Pentagon are gung-ho for world domination."]
Today a report in the Daily Times quoted [Senator] McCain as saying that he believed it could be a "matter of days" before India carried out surgical air strikes if Pakistan did not act on evidence provided to it on elements linked to the attacks.
According to the report, McCain had said that if "Pakistan does not act, and act fast, to arrest the involved people, India will be left with no option but to conduct aerial operations against select targets in Pakistan".
We Americans fool ourselves if we think that the rest of world views our actions benignly or that either Pakistan or India will happily go along and subvert their interests to ours indefinitely. Former ISI chief Hamid Gul puts the neocons' blatant 'gunboat diplomacy' in perspective, dismissing as "nonsense" reports that Pakistan has agreed to arrest and hand him over to India in connection with the probe into the Mumbai terror attacks.
"It is nonsense, it is disinformation because (Secretary of State) Condoleezza Rice and America want my name to be included," he told a private Indian channel over phone from Rawalpindi. "They (the US) don't like this loud voice in which I condemn them, their aggression, their oppression, their invasion over Afghanistan and lies in Iraq. I expose them, their 9/11 was a fraud, it was an inside job,"
It will be a test of Obama's spine and savvy if he can manage the ongoing decline of U.S. hegemony without miring us in a painful economic depression and destroying what's left of our military... not to mention our credibility.
--Arundhati Roy
So it's official. Thanks to the Mumbai massacre (did you know that Westerners were also targets!) India is now firmly aligned with the neocon camp. President Obama is being left little choice but to continue the disastrous Afghanistan war now that Pakistan has been cynically implicated in the devastating terrorist attack.
Whether India with over 150 million Muslims in their population has the stomach for a lengthy Afghanistan occupation will no doubt depend on the concessions they can demand from Washington. With the fastest growing population in the world in a country with already 1 billion people India sees itself as the future ITT giant. One wonders whether a wish to counter India's ambitions lies behind Governor Napolitano, Obama's pick for the Dept. of Homeland Security plan to increase the Asian brain drain by raising the H-1B cap on high tech visas.
As I have conjectured-- the difference between the neocons and the rest of the U.S. foreign policy establishment centers around tactics rather than strategic policy. Thus it came as no great surprise that a governor from Arizona was pegged to head Homeland Security given that state's long and curious ties to international terrorism.
"British Terror Suspect Allegedly Tried to Set Up Training Camp In Arizona"
"Arizona Was Home to bin Laden ''Sleeper Cell'' The Arizona Republic, September 28, 2001"
Nor was I shocked that "bomb, bomb John McCain" jumped on a plane to India and then left to warn the Pakistanis that they had better play along with the latest phase in the "War on Terror" otherwise known as the battle for control of the planet's gas and oil. As far as the neocons are concerned-- transparent threats are an imperial power's finest form of diplomacy.
[Recalling Phase 1: Don't forget Georgia!
"The Russians have every reason to be worried" about US intentions," says Thomas Stauffer, an energy strategist and former Harvard professor in Washington. "The only geopolitical logic I can see [to long-term US moves]," Stauffer adds, "is that we want to get a certain amount of space on the checkerboard, with which we can negotiate with the Russians."
Such considerations haven't escaped notice in Washington, where US Secretary of State Colin Powell last December said that Kazakhstan's oil was becoming of "critical importance."
And "Caspian reserves could be critical to future global energy supply," notes an analysis earlier this month by the respected, London-based Jane's Foreign Report. "This is in line with the doctrine of 'full-spectrum dominance' that now seems to govern American foreign policy and is manifesting itself in the Caucasus and Central Asia," the report said.
That some in Washington want to keep US troops in Central Asia beyond the Afghanistan campaign "accentuates the fact that the war on terrorism is horribly complicated, and risks being lost by being overloaded with other agendas," Lieven adds. "One problem is that some in the Pentagon are gung-ho for world domination."]
Today a report in the Daily Times quoted [Senator] McCain as saying that he believed it could be a "matter of days" before India carried out surgical air strikes if Pakistan did not act on evidence provided to it on elements linked to the attacks.
According to the report, McCain had said that if "Pakistan does not act, and act fast, to arrest the involved people, India will be left with no option but to conduct aerial operations against select targets in Pakistan".
We Americans fool ourselves if we think that the rest of world views our actions benignly or that either Pakistan or India will happily go along and subvert their interests to ours indefinitely. Former ISI chief Hamid Gul puts the neocons' blatant 'gunboat diplomacy' in perspective, dismissing as "nonsense" reports that Pakistan has agreed to arrest and hand him over to India in connection with the probe into the Mumbai terror attacks.
"It is nonsense, it is disinformation because (Secretary of State) Condoleezza Rice and America want my name to be included," he told a private Indian channel over phone from Rawalpindi. "They (the US) don't like this loud voice in which I condemn them, their aggression, their oppression, their invasion over Afghanistan and lies in Iraq. I expose them, their 9/11 was a fraud, it was an inside job,"
It will be a test of Obama's spine and savvy if he can manage the ongoing decline of U.S. hegemony without miring us in a painful economic depression and destroying what's left of our military... not to mention our credibility.
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