Time to bury the idea of strategic asset

[If there is any chance for Pakistan and India to ever break-off hostilities, then it will come by first adopting the ideas about strategic depth and strategic assets that are laid-out in the following article.  Both Pakistan and India are showing signs that they are attempting to shake-off the Imperial stranglehold, which works to exacerbate their natural divisions.  By befriending the US, over other strategic partners, and opening doors to American corporations, both countries have opened the door to meddling which comes most often in the way of enticement, instead of threat.  By giving India and Pakistan the military and economic boosts they seek, they have gained the advantage of the benefit of the doubt, whenever Imperial policies collide with national interests.  Governments can overlook a lot of underhandedness, if doing so brings promises from their benefactors of even greater rewards in the future. 

Rest assured, that should either government ever defend is own national interests over Imperial designs, then they should expect to find that the rug has been pulled from under their feet.  The moment that either government accepts the idea that they will do the right thing for their people, even though they will lose the benefits gained from Empire, that is the beginning of their liberation.  That is the beginning of freedom from outside manipulation.] 

A. S. PANNEERSELVANThe language of strategic asset reduces the ideas of home, state, country, and continent to movable pieces on the chessboard.

It is strange that even the killing of Osama bin Laden at Abbottabad, near Pakistan’s capital, has failed to raise fundamental questions about the idea of creating Frankensteins in the name of strategic assets and the wisdom of the defence experts and strategic analysts. A cursory look at history since the end of the Second World War shows that strategic assets proved to be an albatross around humanity’s neck: they played a key role in undermining legitimate political struggles across the globe. Yet the military narrative has not freed itself from the stranglehold of two fatally flawed ideas — strategic asset and strategic depth.

Before exploring the debilitating impact of these two terms —strategic asset and strategic depth — it is important to understand the origins of these terms. They were the product of the colonial imagination where the world was divided among the empires, and the geostrategic pivots determined the expansion or shrinking of any colonial power. One state was pitted against another and people became collateral damage even before the term could gain the current political currency. The Cold War invested the two terms with an entirely new meaning and scale of application and the damage done to peoples and countries across the world was incomparably greater.

West Asian authoritarianism, for example, is in part the creation of the notion of strategic asset in the form of oil reserves. Much has been written, by way of strategic analysis, about the role of the Soviet Union in Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia. But its move into Afghanistan is the source of our present concern and the one that redefined international politics permanently. The United States, the Arab dictators, and Pakistan used the Soviet occupation as an excuse to create a political Islam that not only distorted the religion but also unleashed unprecedented violence against its perceived enemies and against itself. The Soviets left Afghanistan by February 1989 but the so-called ‘liberators’ never left the country, which has been under one form of occupation or another since 1979. The mujahideen and their jihads were supported, funded, trained, armed, and seen as great strategic assets that could provide strategic depth to bleed the opposition to death. This vision did not take into account the irreparable damage it would inflict upon the Muslim world in general and Afghanistan and Pakistan in particular.

Well-known Pakistani writer Zahid Hussain pointed out the cost to Pakistan during an India-Pakistan-Afghanistan editors’ meet. He said: “I think 2007 was the turning point for Pakistan, when almost a dozen militant leaders got together and formed the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). This group had a distinctive agenda of enforcing a so-called Sharia rule in the style of the Afghan Taliban — before that, the focus of the Pakistani militants had largely been on fighting the U.S. coalition forces across the border…. That also changed the perception of how the Taliban and the Afghan Taliban are tied together. It is not only the nexus between the TTP and al-Qaeda; there is also a growing nexus between the banned militant groups and the Taliban, and a new form of al-Qaeda that has emerged. I think probably al-Qaeda has taken a different form, which the Americans have failed to understand. The new al-Qaeda is largely Pakistani. Further, there is also distinction between al-Qaeda and the Taliban: TTP provides the recruits or suicide bombers, but al-Qaeda largely attracts educated Pakistanis who have not been a part of other militant organisations.”

A tenuous peace process, weak governance, a security structure that is yet to gain the confidence or competence to tackle sectarian violence, growing doubts about whether to make a deal with the “good Taliban” or to break the “bad Taliban”, and the wavering international commitment have made Afghanistan more vulnerable then ever before. There is an apprehension in Kabul that with the death of Osama bin Laden, the U.S. might not show the same intensity to wage its “war on terror” as its principal enemy has been eliminated. With multiple players trying to create their own strategic assets, Afghans fear that their country might once again be divided into myriad fiefdoms of warlords and drug mafia. The tragedy is Afghanistan today is much worse off than it was before the Soviet occupation and withdrawal.

This dangerous trend spilled over to India in the form of increased militancy in Jammu and Kashmir, a shocking terrorist attack on Parliament, the monstrous Mumbai carnage, to name just a few of the horrific experiences of the past decade and a half. It is not that India is free from delusions of strategic assets and the grandeur of strategic depth, despite every move backfiring badly — notably with respect to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. But that is another story.

Till the armed men from across the border reached the valley, a large number of informed Indians understood the Kashmiri struggle, and did not hesitate to criticise the government of India for rigging elections. They refused to accept the BJP’s demand for the abrogation of Article 370, which confers a special status on Jammu and Kashmir. However, the overt militarisation of the State inspired by the strategic interests of Pakistan has hurt the people of Kashmir incalculably. In reality, the power enjoyed by J&K today is decisively lower than what was enshrined in Article 370 of the Indian Constitution.

The same is true for most of the Northeastern States as their special status has been hugely undermined by the Armed Forces Special Powers Act and the constant appointments of former Army Generals as Governors, who tend to wield more power than the respective Chief Ministers. India’s new strategic interest in using its close relations with Myanmar’s military junta to check China’s reach to the Bay of Bengal has already taken a toll. The country has virtually ceased its support for the pro-democracy movement and its iconic leader Aung San Suu Kyi and no one knows what the fallouts will be.

The language of strategic asset reduces the ideas of home, state, country, and continent to movable pieces on the chessboard. It is a language that is never peopled; it has no capability to empathise or be poignant; it fails to understand pain; and it has no sense to understand the profound grief of any society that lost its liberal space to a variety of bigots. The security experts’ idea of supremacy is directly pitted against the people’s deepest dream of living fully while existing. To achieve this, we need to temper the power of the entrenched security establishments and retrieve the space for a larger political discourse.

(S. Panneerselvan is the Executive Director of Panos South Asia. Panos South Asia has been organising an annual editors’ retreat that brings together the influential media personalities from India, Pakistan and Afghanistan to increase the information flow to curtail the mutual trust deficit.)

Pakistan – Are we being completely deceived?

In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful

As-Salam-o-Alaikum (Peace be unto you)

I hope you have been well. The ‘Osama Killed’ fiasco continues. The script has been revised several times in the past 10 or so days already.

It is now safe to conclude that the entire episode is just one massive hoax. I encourage you to watch the following videos in full,

– The bin Laden Hoax – Its Uses & Objectives

– Webster Tarpley: Next False Flag Terror Op will be Blamed on Pakistan’s ISI

Now let us take another objective look at the situation,

The ‘factual’ information that we have been allowed to see is as follows,

– A tail of a Blackhawk stealth helicopter
– A house in Abbottabad

And if you want to count it,

– Osama’s ‘family members’, though no proof exists that they are Osama Bin Laden’s family members or indeed there are any people at all in the Pakistani custody.

.Everything else has been nothing but pure speculation, statements, revised statements, and yet more revised statements.

What the propaganda has successfully achieved so far, though with certain bumps here and there, is that a ‘raid’ in Pakistan actually took place. The propaganda machine be it American or Pakistani (and I am including the militaries of both countries), has in fact managed to get the public accept the larger story i.e. a ‘raid’ took place, and left most speculators arguing the finer points of the script.

There is nothing that can be given as concrete proof that a ‘raid’ by US Navy SEALs took place in Pakistan in Abbottabad, apart from the statements and the helicopter tail. Interestingly, one is forced to wonder that if the body of ‘Osama’ was extracted by the SEALs and then dumped into the ocean (just like the mafia gangsters dispose the bodies of their victims), what proof does the Pakistani Government and the Pakistani Army have to conclude that ‘Osama’ was indeed killed in the ‘raid’ in Abbottabad, that there was indeed an intelligence failure on the part of Pakistani intelligence as the ISPR statement read? i.e. unless they authorized it in the first place.
(http://www.ispr.gov.pk/front/main.asp?o=t-week_view&id=1736#wv_link1736).

Perhaps the US showed them the (fake) pictures of ‘Bin Laden’ as proof that the ‘raid’ took place and they bought it though no one else did as events have later proved. Also, no statements were made by the Army that any intel or info had indeed been exchanged with the US in the immediate aftermath of the ‘raid’.

Our government’s and military commanders’ conduct becomes even more questionable when one puts into perspective the fact that neutral and governmental sources in the US and UK have stated time and again that Osama Bin Laden died a long time ago (somewhere between 2001 and 2002) because of kidney failure. The late Benazir Bhutto stated as much as well. With this new perspective one is also forced to wonder whether this was the claim that confirmed her death sentence.

There are also reports from the locals in Abbottabad that there was a protective perimeter in place around ‘Osama’s compound’ (a fact that has been silently suppressed by the media) at the time of the ‘raid’. The two Pakistanis first on scene after the ‘raid’ were the local SHO and the local intelligence officer. The SHO? Really? We all know the immaculate efficiency of the Pakistan Police.

The hypothesis could be that the CIA had bought the local law enforcement off and they placed the perimeter around the ‘compound’ and the military was unaware, but the local intelligence officer was on the scene as well. Was he bought off too? But most importantly, do an SHO and a local intelligence officer have the required amounts of ‘guts and brains’ to manage such an undertaking? You know the answer better than I do.

Then there is the Air Chief statement that the ‘radars were off’ at the time of the ‘raid’. I laughed out loud when I read that one. One thought Kaleem Sadat, the previous Air Chief, was perhaps a US stooge, but this person Rao Qamar Suleman has left him behind by a long shot, a real War on Terror lackey this one.

Of course this preposterous statement was immediately ‘shot down’ by the many competent and far more patriotic former Air Force commanders (and I am sure the current officers and airmen of the PAF aren’t too impressed either). But the important aspect is, why would Rao Qamar issue such a dumb statement? Why such intense rather desperate effort to lend credibility to the US storyline?

In the midst of it all, you have a ‘roaring’ Imran Khan rising like a valiant savior on the political horizon in this hour of desperate need. It is no coincidence either ladies and gentlemen. He is being propped up by the establishment to be its new public face. The same establishment that facilitated and consolidated Musharraf for 10 years, then engineered the ‘Lawyers Movement’ to give him safe exit and maneuvered the likes of Zardari in power. The same establishment that has handed over the keys of Karachi to a Hindu terrorist organization and has turned this vital metropolis into a hotbed for racial, linguistic, and sectarian terrorism.

The same establishment is now engineering the political uprising of Imran Khan (No wonder PML N is so enraged, they thought it was their turn); All of this in the immediate aftermath of the ‘Osama incident’. The credibility of Imran Khan, in stark similarity to the rest of the political elite, can be understood from his ‘hell-ov-a’ U-turn on MQM. The bitter enemies of the past became best friends overnight. What filth!

The other rising pillar is Shah Mehmood Qureshi, the new power in upper Sindh and lower Punjab. The potential heir of the ‘Saraiki Suba’ I suspect, and PPP’s replacement.

The new setup will likely comprise of Imran Khan, Jamat e Islami, MQM, and Shah Mehmod Qureshi. The PMLs will be in the opposition probably, tough luck for PML N.

But one must understand that this new set up is probably being brought in to dampen down the fury of the masses and the multitude of the loyal patriotic soldiers and officers of Pakistan military. In the meantime, the CIA script for Pakistan is in full swing. Incidentally, Imran Khan, like a dedicated employee has been clocking face time with the US officials and the ISI chief (he admitted the second part himself).

A straight shot, Imran Khan is through and through the Jews’ man. That is my flat out analysis based on this and other information. And if he is crooked then this new set up is crooked (much like the present one, only worse). And if the set up is crooked, then so is the establishment which is and has been designing the set up.

From this point of view, the immediate acceptance by the government of the US storyline, the acceptance by the military high command of the US storyline, and the absurd statement of the Air Chief immediately make sense. The elite are corrupt and crooked.

All of this became even more apparent when I read that Major General Isfandiyar Ali Khan Pataudi, Armoured Corps — GOC 25th Mechanised Division, Karachi was to be the possible new ISI chief (http://rupeenews.com/?p=36706) .

Major General Isfandiyar Ali Khan Pataudi is the son of the late Major General Nawabzada Sher Ali Khan of Pataudi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sher_Ali_Khan_%28general%29). Major General Isfandiyar is descended from the line of the Nawabs of Pataudi and, by relation, is the uncle of the Indian actor Saif Ali Khan.

Certainly, being Saif Ali Khan’s uncle by relation is not the greatest sin, but this is not the problem. Please visit the link http://www.reachouthyderabad.com/newsmaker/hw56.htm

Let me quote from the above webpage,

“It is a 3,000 years old movement spread all over the globe. It has been existing in India for the past 250 years and in twin cities 130 years. Globally Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Benjamin Fraklin, Henry Ford, Clive Lloyd and All Presidents of United States of America were its member. In India Swami Vivekananda, C. Rajagopalachari, Motilal Nehru, Fakruddin Ali Ahmed, Madhavrao Scindia, Nawab of Pataudi, locally Nizam of Hyderabad, A.R. Lakshmanan.”

The ‘old movement’ in question is the movement known for the past 400-450 years as ‘Freemasonry’.

I have made every possible effort to find out which Nawab of Pataudi was the first Freemason. But the information resources have dried up without success. Surprising that even a resource like the internet could not ‘cough up’ a word on it.

Regardless, the Nawabs of Pataudi like other nawabs and rajas on the British payroll, enjoyed their royal privileges in India until 1971 when fiefdoms were abolished (these ‘royals’ nonetheless remain still). Saif Ali Khan’s father Mansoor Ali Khan was thus the last official Nawab of Pataudi.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nawab_of_Pataudi)

The purpose for stating all this is that the Nawabs of Pataudi were certainly British loyalists hence they were allowed to remain Nawabs even after the British left. They were most certainly freemasons as well.

Incidentally, freemasonry membership is very often handed down from father to son. So, if the tradition of freemasonry has been handed down from father to son, it is very much possible that the late Major General Nawabzada Sher Ali Khan of Pataudi and now his son Major General Isfandiyar Ali Khan Pataudi are both freemasons as well. So are we about to have a freemason installed as the DG ISI (provided of course that the current DG isn’t a freemason as well)?

Incidentally, the late Major General Nawabzada Sher Ali Khan of Pataudi held the position of Federal Minister for Information, Broadcasting & and National Affairs from 1969 to 1971 under Yahya Khan’s administration. Maintaining such a key position in such a tumultuous period when the Masonic and anti-Pakistan elements successfully engineered the breakup of Pakistan is further very disturbing information that puts both the late Major General Nawabzada Sher Ali Khan and now his son Major General Isfandiyar Ali Khan Pataudi under very bad light.

In the view of all of this information, I am forced to conclude that our, federal, provincial, military, and bureaucratic (including Judiciary) top positions are heavily compromised and held by Enemy agents. All of the ruckus being made is designed to keep the Muslims of Pakistan, its patriotic civilians, loyal soldiers, and dedicated officers, in a state of complete confusion until one fine morning when we are being told that Pakistan is facing balkanization (as per the Enemy plan) and when it is too late (also as per the Enemy’s plan). Another very important reason for maintaining this confusion is to avoid a state of ‘legitimate’ all-out confrontation between the Muslims of Pakistan and anti-Pakistan forces (very much like in 2001 when Musharraf was placed for exactly this objective at the onset of the invasion of Afghanistan).

The objective of this article is by no means to discourage the people of Pakistan but to clear this air of confusion. Indeed what I have discussed is the worst-case scenario, I may certainly be wrong, indeed I hope to Almighty Allah with all my heart that I am wrong and the situation is apparently not as bleak as I see it to be. But I think I am not too far from the truth.