An 'Explanatory' Note From Washington To Pakistan

Genuine Pakistani concerns about the Kerry-Lugar bill have been summarily dismissed thanks to arrogant US congressmen, a politicized Pakistani ambassador in Washington, and an inept pro-US elected government in Islamabad that has lost the trust of a majority of Pakistanis.  US Vice President Joe Biden should seriously look into who turned his brilliant idea into a huge blunder.

 

By Ahmed Quraishi

Thursday, 15 October 2009.

WWW.AHMEDQURAISHI.COM

 

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—When the Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi stood in Washington last night to say, 'This is a historic document' and tried to act excited, a distinct look of confusion was visible on the faces of the two Americans standing to his right and left: Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Congressman Howard Berman, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

 

For a second it seemed as if both Mr. Kerry and Mr. Berman were looking at Mr. Qureshi and saying to themselves, 'Is this guy for real?'

 

There is a reason why the two seemed distrustful of the minister.

 

Only a few hours earlier the Pakistani Foreign Minister addressed a press conference with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton where Mr. Qureshi appeared far more excited about the Kerry-Lugar aid bill than his host.  [Ms. Clinton had to point out a couple of times she couldn't be more 'eloquent' than the Pakistani minister in describing the aid bill.]  At one point, Mr. Qureshi rebuffed a Pakistani journalist who said Pakistanis back home were concerned about offensive language in some clauses.

 

"I'm very glad that they [Americans] have no intentions of micromanaging Pakistan, nor will Pakistan permit micromanagement," Qureshi said.  "Never will we allow any compromise on Pakistan's sovereignty."

 

"I'm very glad that they [Americans] have no intentions of micromanaging Pakistan, nor will Pakistan permit micromanagement," Qureshi said.  "Never will we allow any compromise on Pakistan's sovereignty."

 

But no sooner he returned to Islamabad than he was back on the plane to Washington.  He had no choice, especially after an uproar in the country where a clear majority in the parliament, media, the public opinion and in the armed forces accused his government of accepting humiliating language that stops short of accusing Pakistan of running terrorist training camps and continuing to proliferate nuclear knowhow, both of which are accusations not backed by any evidence except unsourced US media reports and noise on the US think-tank circuit. The language in at least one clause is carefully drafted to push the civilian government to pick up fights with the military on issues ranging from officer promotions to excluding military input from nuclear-related policy.

So when Mr. Qureshi was back in Washington acting excited all over again, both Kerry and Berman were  understandably unsure whether they should believe the minister or wait for him to go to Islamabad, get an earful again and come back with more reservations.

 

But a far more serious issue is how Washington's establishment appears to have dismissed genuine Pakistani concerns with a mere 'explanatory' note.  You just have to admire the sense of humor behind naming this piece of paper a 'joint explanatory statement' that will be attached to the Kerry-Lugar bill.

 

Since the Pakistani parliament is still debating the bill and is yet to pass its final resolution on it, it is too early to say how will Mr. Qureshi be received back home [he is en route as these lines are written.]

 

But here is an initial assessment.

 

With the so-called 'Joint Explanatory Statement', Washington has rebuffed President Zardari, Prime Minister Gilani, Chief of Army Staff Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and ISI chief Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, who huddled for a couple of hours before designating Foreign Minister Qureshi to fly to Washington and seek changes in the controversial clauses or simply the removal of the three or four controversial clauses so that the remainder of the bill focused on aid and cooperation could move forward.

 

If the bill is accepted in its present form, Pakistan will

 

1.       Effectively be accepting that two major cities Quetta and Muridke are centers of terror as the bill alleges without any real evidence 

2.      Pakistan will also be accepting that it will entertain possible US requests for access to suspected nuclear proliferators as demanded by US and without stipulating that evidence be produced for such a demand

3.      Pakistan will also be allowing Washington to demand reports from Pakistani civilian leaders confirming their control over internal military promotions and appointments.  Interestingly, this clause opens the door for more US meddling in Pakistani politics since politicians will be using this clause and Washington's muscle to reign in the Pakistani military.  The clause is a recipe for endless civil-military tensions. 

4.      Pakistan will also not be in a position to dispute unfounded US and British accusations that seek to shift the blame to Pakistan for failures in Afghanistan.

 

Mr. Qureshi has essentially sold off Pakistani interest on the basis of an 'explanatory statement'.  He failed to defend the Pakistani position or prevail on the American officials on the core issue of the insult that most Pakistanis feel today because of the humiliating language in the bill.  

 

Another problem is how the Pakistani embassy in Washington, under Ambassador Husain Haqqani, continues to feed a wrong picture of the debate back home in Pakistan. Mr. Haqqani is under tremendous attack in the Pakistani parliament for his role in failing to stop the controversial clauses. Members of his own government feel that the buck should stop at his desk for the fiasco.  To save his position, it seems Mr. Haqqani is feeding his friends in the US media and the Washington establishment that the angst is Pakistan over the bill is 'manufactured' by 'anti-America forces' and is 'manipulated' by the Pakistani military.  Some of his friends in the US media are peddling the theory that Mr. Haqqani is under attack because of his anti-military writings when he was out of government.

 

What Mr. Haqqani is not telling the Americans is that politicians in Pakistan have accused him, and not the US Congress or the US government, of deliberately inserting anti-military clauses in the Kerry-Lugar bill with the help of lobbyists paid for by the Pakistani exchequer and in pursuance of a domestic Pakistani political agenda [in other words, settling domestic scores.]  It is also possible that some quarters in Washington that are not very Pakistan-friendly helped push the bill with unnecessary military-related clauses in a document that is focused on US-Pakistani partnership.

 

The bottom line is this: While his government spokespeople in Islamabad refuse to recognize there is anything wrong with the US bill [even US Ambassador has conceded the language was a mistake'], Mr. Qureshi could not have been expected to put any real effort into convincing US officials to chance the offending language, especially when it is already beginning to look like a battle between his government on the one side and the media-public opinion-political opponents-military on the other side.

 

It is unfortunate that an effort that most probably was undertaken in good faith by Vice President Joe Biden has degenerated into a major blot on the face of US-Pakistani ties because of overbearing US congressmen, a politicized Pakistani ambassador in Washington, and an inept government in Islamabad headed by insecure leaders.

 

Pakistan is left saddled with a bill whose language represents a major Pakistani policy concession on military, nuclear and terrorism issues.  A government that passionately defended the bill's language inside Pakistan made little effort to force a change in language in Washington. 

 

The worst part is that future US legislation and government policy can now always look back and use the clauses that are part of the bill to perpetuate popular US accusations against Pakistan.

 

Does Mr. Qureshi really believe he will receive a hero's welcome in Islamabad tomorrow morning?

 

© 2007-2009. All rights reserved. AhmedQuraishi.com & PakNationalists

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ALERT: Blackwater Recruiting Agents Fluent In Urdu & Punjabi For Pakistan

Report Suggests Pakistani Envoy In Washington Has Issued 360 Visas To Americans In One Month Without Consulting Islamabad


Blackwater USA is looking for mercenaries fluent in Urdu, Pakistan's national language, and Punjabi, the language spoken by natives of Pakistan's largest populated province. The US military already deploys officers and commando units manned by people fluent in Pashto, spoken in most of western Pakistan and southern Afghanistan. Keeping in view the denials of the US embassy in Islamabad and the expanding American presence on Pakistani soil, these recruitments are obviously not meant for running call centers. Since Washington has unilaterally decided that Pakistan is now a 'war theater' after Iraq and Afghanistan, it is only natural that American terrorism will also be unleashed in Pakistan. Blackwater is in Pakistan.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—Blackwater USA has concealed its Web presence. If you type www.BlackwaterUSA.com, you will be redirected to the website of an organization called U.S. Training Center , which offers military and personal security courses. The website does not overtly say or indicate it is linked to Blackwater, but on Sept. 12 a media release was posted on the homepage defending Blackwater against accusations the private 'army' overbilled the US government for work in Iraq in 2006 and 2007.

The bigger news, however, is that 'Blackwater USA' is hiring in Pakistan. While BlackwaterUSA.com does not exist on the Web any longer, I 3an employment form on a secured page of the private security firm's website that clearly indicates the private mercenary army is hiring Urdu- and Punjabi-speaking agents. This would complement the existing Pashto-speaking agents that both Blackwater private mercenary army and its employer, the US military, have on the ground in Afghanistan and – as reports increasingly indicate – in Pakistan.

Snapshots of the screen from the page titled secure.blackwaterusa.com show that the page is part of the Blackwater Employee and Applicant Resource System (BEARS).

The snapshots shown here indicate that hiring continues as we speak for agents and for people with military training who can speak Urdu, Pakistan's national language, and Punjabi, spoken by the natives of Pakistan's largest populated province.

Obviously, agents with proficiency in the two languages will be operating in and around Pakistan since there is little utility for such agents anywhere else in the world.

This is the latest in a pile of circumstantial evidence that supports the growing concerns within the Pakistani public opinion that private US security firms are setting up shop in Pakistan, bringing to the country the same mayhem that has engulfed Iraq and Afghanistan, possibly with the permission of influential people in the Pakistani government.

A petition has been submitted to the Supreme Court of Pakistan today requesting that the government of Pakistan be ordered to explain why the US embassy in Islamabad is building a fortified embassy the size of an international airport, spread over 52 to 54 acres. The petitioner, who is a private Pakistani citizen, has accused the United States of constructing a military base in the heart of the Pakistani capital in the guise of an embassy.

On Aug. 5, PakNationalists/AhmedQuraishi.com broke the news of how a Washington-incorporated private company that calls itself an NGO and executes contractual humanitarian work for the US government in conflict zones is suspected of acting as cover for Blackwater in Peshawar.

On Jul. 27, the Deutsche Presse-Agentur [DPA] reported that residents of an upscale suburb in Peshawar have formally complained to the Pakistani government that armed private Americans were spreading fear in the area.

We also received a statement issued by Mr. Richard Snelsire, the spokesman for the US embassy in Islamabad, denying these reports:

Since 2002, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has committed more than $3.4 billion in humanitarian and development assistance to the people of Pakistan in relief, health, education, and economic development programs.

Creative Associates is one of many organizations USAID engages to deliver this assistance, which also includes the Government of Pakistan, local non-governmental, and international humanitarian institutions. This organization has no link to any international security firm, nor is it affiliated in any way with an intelligence service.

Recent allegations against USAID partners such as Creative Associates are false, and place individuals delivering humanitarian and development assistance to the people of Pakistan at risk.

Richard Snelsire

Despite these denials, the Pakistani government and the US embassy are unable to explain several incidents in Peshawar and Islamabad over the past few weeks that involved privately armed American citizens, especially accounts by private citizens confirming they have seen and interacted with these foreign agents in public places. In at least three incidents, these privately armed Americans were released by police authorities under pressure from the government despite involvement in altercations with local Pakistanis. In one case, an armed US citizen physically assaulted a Pakistani police officer and uttered obscenities against the host country.

The alarming part of this story is that the embassy of Pakistan in Washington is reported to have issued several hundred entry permits and visas to individuals without seeking clearance from the country's security departments. In one recent report, it is reported that the Pakistani ambassador issued 360 visas to US citizens in one month, sometime this year, from the ambassador's discretionary quota of visas and again without clearance from Pakistani security departments.

Who are these Americans who are arriving in Pakistan in the tens and hundreds at a time when the US embassy in Islamabad follows a strange practice where a staffer personally calls any US citizen in the United States in order to warn them about coming to Pakistan for personal reasons or pleasure, apparently because of the security situation?

Holbrooke vs. Geo

Mr. Richard C. Holbrooke, the American Viceroy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, thinks GEO News, Pakistan's most popular news network, is anti-American. That's funny because Pakistani cyberspace is full of writeups accusing GEO of being pro-American.

The problem with Mr. Holbrooke is that Pakistan's small leaders have given him too much face time. We in Pakistan were joking when we compared him to a viceroy but Mr. Holbrooke seems to have taken this seriously. He can't be blamed when Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari lead the pack of Pakistan's lousy politicians falling over each other to meet this pompous American.

There is no place in the world better for Mr. Holbrooke's ego than Islamabad. Just ask his assistant Ashley Bommer.

It is humiliating how he can stand on Pakistani soil and accuse a Pakistani news channel of anti-Americanism simply because the channel dared to question American blunders in Afghanistan because of which Pakistan is suffering today.

Mr. Holbrooke is shameless because the American media is busy for the last two years in massive anti-Pakistanism with secret encouragement from some departments within the U.S. government. So much for being an ally and friend of Pakistan.

The liars in Washington and London have taken Pakistan for a ride in the past 7 years and are today destabilizing the whole region through their colonial outpost in Afghanistan, which the Brits, Americans and Indians [the new Anglo-American slave-soldiers] are preparing to use against Pakistan, Iran, China, Russia.

GEO should ask Mr. Holbrooke to:

1. Stop demonizing Pakistan
2. Admit America has failed to bring peace to Afghanistan in 7 years
3. Explain how a U.S.-occupied territory has become a launch pad for trained terrorists sent to Pakistan pretending to be Taliban
4. Stop lying to the world about Pakistani nukes and about Islamabad falling to Taliban
5. Explain how CNN, BBC and the rest of the Am-Brit 'independent and free' media marches in unison behind the lies of Washington and its British poodle without asking questions
6. Explain why American media and journalism has become a bastion of dirty spy work
7. Explain why American journalists have the highest incidents of being arrested in other countries on spying charges? Why one was recently arrested in Iran and was found in possession of sensitive Iranian official documents? Why two more have been arrested in North Korea? Is the U.S. mainstream media a shameless extension of CIA, NSA, etc.?

Pakistani journalists should take note and ensure that Mr. Holbrooke answers these questions the next time he is here in Islamabad.

[Click here to watch Mr. Holbrooke accuse GEO of 'showing a lot of anti-U.S. stuff.']

Roxana Saberi And The Am-Brit Media Lies

Since 2007, two nations – Britain and the United States – have been mounting a venomously anti-Pakistan campaign with variations on a single theme: Pakistan is falling apart, the nukes could fly around, Taliban will take over, and Pakistan needs the saviors, an Anglo-American military intervention to save the day.

The campaign has been based entirely on conjecture and insinuations that eerily match the latest U.S. plans for Pakistan. The more Washington talked about Pakistan’s double game, more ‘Pakistani Taliban’ and other shady terrorists and insurgents crossed from Afghanistan to terrorize Pakistanis and attack the military.

The Am-Brit media campaign against Pakistan is as colorful as the one run by the same Anglo-American media against Iraq before the invasion, all of course based on outright lies, doctored pictures and CIA-planted stories. None of these Am-Brit news organizations ever apologized later for becoming a tool in the hands of the CIA, the U.S. military and the U.S. government.

And just as in Iraq’s case, this campaign against Pakistan is exclusively an Am-Brit campaign, meaning that no one else is involved in running it except the Americans and the Brits. The occasional role of the Indian poodle doesn’t count. You don’t see the German media, or the Spanish, Italian, Swiss, Finnish, Russian, Chinese, Saudi, or any other media in any other country mounting this campaign.

It’s an Am-Brit operation. People in the military call it psy-ops, short for psychological operations.

The masterpiece in this regard was the October 2007 Newsweek cover story that decided that Pakistan and not Iraq was the most dangerous place on earth today [conveniently overlooking Iraq and Afghanistan were American and British secret ‘death squads’ were busy in murdering Iraqis.]

The latest masterpiece is BBC’s report released recently where BBC has concluded, while sitting in London, that only 38% of the NWFP province is in fact under Pakistan’s sovereign control.

Two weeks ago, it was CNN’s turn. It made the fall of Islamabad in the hands of a few terrorists the lead story for two days, raising a global scare. Then the Pakistani military strongly protested at this scare campaign which was false. That’s when the U.S. puppet Zardari government in Islamabad, and Mullen, Petraeus, Clinton, Holbrooke and the rest of the Obama admin came out to deny this and feign ignorance about the origin of these lies being feverishly peddled by the Am-Brit media.

According to BBC’s findings, a disorderly bunch of terrorists have suddenly defeated the world’s sixth largest standing army, and a professional one at that, and are now almost in control of one of the four federating Pakistani provinces.

And what was BBC’s source for this story that most Pakistanis missed in their own country? Well, 18 months of news reports filed by BBC correspondents from areas within Pakistan where terrorism incidents have occurred. BBC’s strategists concluded that this was ample proof the territory was no longer under Pakistani control.

What is the purpose of these scare stories in the Am-Brit media? Well, London and Washington have been keen to hide the massive failures in their Afghan occupation and seize the opportunity to move the war into Pakistan and punish the Pakistanis for supporting the Afghan Taliban [the real Taliban] and for not accepting the great Am-Brit wider plan of turning the Pakistani army into a local police force, contain the nuclear weapons, and allow India to become the new regional Am-Brit slave-soldier in charge of Am-Brit interests.

No one in the Am-Brit media talks about the money and weapons that these terrorists inside Pakistan are receiving from ‘someone’ in Afghanistan. This is how Pakistan has been destabilized in less than four years. Have you heard about organized terrorists armed with anti-aircraft guns killing Pakistanis and fighting the Pakistani military before 2005?

The BBC story fits in perfectly with scores of reports, op-ed pieces, statements and intensive public brainstorming on the U.S. think-tank circuit on how Pakistan’s different ethnic groups should be made to fight with each other in order to hasten the collapse of the Pakistani state.

Just to conclude with the BBC story. The BBC report ended with a statement from a correspondent in Islamabad warning that it would be inaccurate to say Pakistan has lost control of its territory because the terrorists are not an organized entity and are made up of small groups mounting hit and run attacks and so there’s no need to exaggerate.

Wow, BBC.

So after creating a stir, the report is concluded with an exit that allows for a retraction in the future.

And so the Am-Brit media lies continue. Read them with a pinch of salt next time.

P.S. Roxana Saberi, an American journalist, has just been released. While the Americans would have us think she was this poor truth seeker imprisoned by a dictatorial regime in Iran, the real truth comes out to show, again, how the Am-Brit media is a willing and ready tool of the Am-Brit intelligence and military. In 2003, Ms. Saberi, then an Iranian citizen, apparently worked in Iran as a translator in a government department that dealt with national security issues. Now, six years later, she was sent to Iran as a U.S. journalist. She worked her contacts to get hold of classified documents and was naturally going to hand them over to CIA. That's how she was arrested. Not a journalist but definitely shown as one, courtesy of one of America's 'free' media organizations for sure.

Naveen And Olmert

This comes a couple of weeks late because of the pressing situation in and around Pakistan. The Kazakh government hosted the annual Eurasia Media Forum in Almaty, the former capital of Kazakhstan.

This media forum is fascinating mainly because it is not a western [read 'British-American'] take on international issues. The Kazakh forum approaches the issues from a wider, internationalist perspective. This means, for example, that the war in Georgia last year was debated from both the Russian and the western angles instead of just the Georgian perspective that was heavily promoted by the American and the British media.

So it was refreshing to watch Naveen Naqvi, a Pakistani journalist who works for Dawn News, give a tough time to the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as she interviewed him via a satellite link. At least twice Mr. Olmert paused, appeared at a loss for words, and repeated twice smilingly, 'You are a smart, you are smart.'

Mr. Olmert couldn't stop himself from trying to soften Naveen by appealing to her ego. He kept sending subtle flirty signals and at one point expressed the desire to meet Naveen and have tea with her. But the beautiful and tough Pakistani lady wouldn't budge. Click below to see a clip of the event from my cell phone. The quality is not good but the entire Naveen-Olmert interaction will be posted at the PakNationalists Channel on Youtube very soon.

The debate over Georgia was itself very fascinating. Alexey Nikolov [pictured on this page with me and the Leonardo DiCaprio lookalike] who is the deputy editor of Russia Today television network, handed to me a DVD that showed how footage of Russian tanks filmed by one of his cameramen was used out of context by CNN as evidence that Russian forces were invading Georgia.

I was invited to speak as a panelist on media and blogs. But fun started when a senior official from OSCE, which is kind of an offshoot of NATO countries in Eurasia, began his remarks with a pressure tactic against the host government. The Rep almost condemned a bill that the Kazakh parliament is debating on regulating political blogging. My response turned the whole session into a trial of western interference in other nation's domestic issues. My argument was simple: The Americans and the Brits [The Am-Brits] destabilized Pakistan through interference in our local politics. They shouldn't be allowed to do the same to Kazakhstan. [Click here to check out clips from the session. The sound quality is low and the full version will be posted soon.]

The Leorardo DiCaprio lookalike [real name Ruslan Zhemkov] is a close aide to Dr. Dariga Nazarbayeva, the daughter of the Kazakh president and a stateswoman in her own right. Zalmay Khalilzad and Richard Holbrooke both call him Leonardo during their frequent trips to Kazakhstan. Those frequent trips are in themselves an interesting subject of a new column I'll be writing shortly.

I leave you here with a photo with Dr. Dariga Nazabayeva, daughter of the President, and Alex Kogen, a journalist from Israel.

US Embassy Summons Nawaz Sharif

Just when I was trying to begin to develop a renewed respect for Mr. Nawaz Sharif, a new example of hypocrisy by the former prime minister hit me smack in the face. I lost respect for Mr. Sharif the day he ordered the army chief to be kidnapped in a plane and landed in India, of all places. That was a long time ago, so I said to myself let's try to develop a new respect for the former premier, especially when Mr. Sharif worked hard over the past one year to build an image of himself as a Pakistani nationalist. I am a hardcore PakNationalist myself. Unlike many other politicians, Mr. Sharif wasn't afraid to criticize U.S. president Obama and his Pakistan policies. But then something strange happened. Mr. Holbrooke landed in Pakistan last Monday, the U.S. Embassy called and Mr. Sharif and brother, the Angry Sharif Jr., were racing the winds at the break of dawn, taking the highway from Lahore to Islamabad Tuesday morning to be at the U.S. embassy in time to meet Mr. Holbrooke who asked to see the two brothers. It was amazing. Mr. Sharif's anti-Obama posturing is for public consumption. In private, Mr. Sharif has no problem to be summoned by Obama's top dog for the region. The next day, Mr. Sharif's hired gun, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, put on his best face to spin the story. "We are not carried away by the sudden American interest in our party", "Nawaz Sharif spent most of the meeting defending ISI and the Army", "We'll never compromise principles". These were some of the gems announced by Mr. Sharif's spin man. The truth is, the Sharif brothers went to the U.S. Embassy alone and didn't take along any party member. So this wasn't a party visit. This was a personal-cum-family visit to see if the Americans would agree to ditch Zardari and PPP and help Nawaz Sharif 'return' to his rightful seat, the premiership. It was hunger for power that took the Sharif brothers to the U.S. embassy. If Mr. Sharif was a real Pakistani nationalist, he would have asked Mr. Holbrooke to come to Lahore, or at least to the Punjab House in the federal capital which is the official venue for a foreign government official to meet the chief minister of a Pakistani province. Nawaz Sharif also knows that when he was facing possible execution for treason in 1999, it was a U.S. president, Bill Clinton, who came to his rescue and organized the 'deal' that saved his neck. A close friend of Imran Khan quoted the cricketer making this private comment last year about Nawaz Sharif, "You can't trust him. He's deceiver." Imran said this when Mr. Sharif misled everyone by encouraging them not to run in last year's elections under Musharraf and then one fine morning decided to ditch all opposition parties and went along with 'U.S. dealmakers' BB and Zardari.

Hillary, Zardari & One Iranian Bureaucrat

I am stunned, pleased and ashamed. In a few minutes from now, there’s a chance that the foreign minister of the biggest power on earth will meet … who? Not the President of Iran, or Iran’s army chief or any of the seniors, but the Deputy foreign minister of Iran, not a very powerful position within the Iranian system, and that too if the Iranians didn’t decide in the last minute that they don’t want to meet the Americans.

Richard Holbrooke, who has a dubious position as the U.S. special envoy for ‘Af-Pak’ has already met the deputy Iranian foreign minister, and that’s the highest the Iranians are willing to go in giving respect to Mr. Hoolbrooke, unlike the Zardaris, the Gilanis and the Qureshis and the rest of them who fall all over each other to get an opportunity to shake hands with this U.S. bureaucrat.

So desperate is the United States at The Hague to meet the Iranians that they begged everyone they know to convince the Iranians to attend this conference on Afghanistan where Washington hopes to get help getting out of the mess it has created in that country.

And just like typical stooges, our President Zardari and Foreign Minister Mehmood Qureshi rushed to Tehran recently on behalf of the Americans to plead with the Iranians to attend this U.S.-sponsored conference, not knowing that dragging Iran into Afghanistan is actually part of the U.S. plan to ditch Pakistan in the gutter and trample on Pakistani interests by uniting the world against our country. I mean how stupid can you be, Mr. President Zardari and Mr. Foreign Minister Qureshi?

Last week our President traveled secretly to Dubai to meet, not the U.S. president or vice president, not even the U.S. foreign minister, but some bureaucrat with a questionable title called ‘Af-Pak special envoy’. Imagine: the head of the 6th nuclear power, the 5th or the 6th largest standing army in the world, a nation with considerable strategic, political and economic position, flying off like some third-level government officer to meet a third-rate American civil servant in Dubai.

And here are the Iranians being begged by the Americans to meet them. And for what? So that Iran could permit NATO and the U.S. military to use its ports to transport fuel, food and equipment to Afghanistan. The objective is to rob Pakistan of any advantage in negotiations with the United States. Iran is of course dying to replace Pakistan as an equal partner of the U.S. and they will get that status on their terms, not like us in Pakistan where our ex-President Musharraf unfortunately gave the Americans so much access and now the puppet government of Zardari-Gilani has gone much farther than its predecessor [at least President Musharraf had certain red lines drawn for the Americans, which is why they destabilized his government].

President Zardari and the rest of the puppets in his government, especially Ambassador Husain Haqqani and Interior Advisor Rehman Malik [thank God Mehmood Ali Durrani is out] should be ashamed of themselves when Hillary Clinton begs a deputy minister in Iran for a meeting. In our case, any low-level officer in her office can call the President of Pakistan and he’d rush to meet not her but that low-level officer, and that too anywhere the low-level officer wishes, like Dubai for example.

Ambassador Haqqani is doing a great job for the Americans in this case. He arranged that secret meeting in Dubai so that no one in Pakistan can know what Mr. Zardari is cooking with the Americans. Not a single officer in the Presidency, in the PPP, in the media, the intelligence community or the diplomatic community knows what our President discussed with a U.S. government officer in secret in Dubai. Does Ambassador Haqqani not know that he is doing something wrong by arranging this kind of a meeting? Or is it okay as long as it serves American interests?

Holbrook is coming to Pakistan sometime next week after visiting India. Just wait and see how this political elite of ours will be begging the U.S. Embassy here for an invitation to his tea reception and a photo opportunity.

I hope to see the day when these politicians are disqualified from holding public office for the next 20 or 30 years and their little fieldoms, also known as political parties, are destroyed to pave the way for honest Pakistani leaders to emerge. It can happen in Russia (Putin), it can happen in Venezuela (Chavez), it can happen in Turkey (Erdogan), it can happen in Malaysia (Mahatir), it can happen in Iran (Nejad), it can happen in China (Hu Jintao). It certainly can happen in Pakistan.