Pakistan Military Under Attack

[This column appeared in The News International today but an important paragraph was inadvertently dropped. Here is the full version.]

General Kayani's statement protesting the assault on the morale and reputation of Pakistan Armed Forces is a good move. But let us not kid ourselves. It’s too little, too late, and lacks legal punch.

Attacks on our military from inside and outside the country have become a thriving business since 2007. The inability of the State and the military to defend themselves is a matter of deep concern not only for our soldiers but also for the majority of patriotic Pakistanis. Blunt denigration of our military by domestic actors shot through the roof in this five-year period. Strangely, this unprecedented domestic military-bashing overlapped with a similar campaign originating in the United States against Pakistan Army and ISI. There is little evidence that a statement from the army chief would end the domestic part of the campaign, although there are signs the American-led external campaign has waned to some extent, but not ended.

The military in Pakistan is an easy target. Muhammad Shafqaat, a driver for the federal Interior Ministry, accused the ISI of kidnapping him along with his official car from a parking lot in Blue Area, Islamabad last month. It turns out the alleged kidnapping was staged as part of a plan to disrupt a probe into a four-billion rupees immigration fraud case. The spy agency had nothing to do with any of this but apparently Shafqaat thought mentioning ISI would make his story credible. In July, prominent journalist Najam Sethi accused our military of planning to kill him in an interview to a British newspaper. In June, political activist Asma Jehangir told a German broadcaster the ISI plotted her murder. In January, presidential adviser Farahnaz Ispahani was caught telling a British journalist in Washington with known links to her party that she flee Pakistan because she feared ISI was going to kidnap her. Ispahani denied she made the statement but the British journalist and her paper stood by the story.

The get-ISI campaign doesn’t end with these politically-motivated attacks. Afghanistan-based terrorist group BLA accused the ISI of jailing 6,000 Pakistani Baloch women. The group kidnapped a UN official from Quetta in 2009 and said it would exchange him for the Baloch women. Fortunately, the kidnapped UN official turned out to be an American citizen and the involvement of US government in the probe proved conclusively there was not a single Pakistani Baloch lady in any jail across Pakistan and there were no missing-person cases registered for any Baloch woman. One more lie against ISI stricken from the book.

A different kind of attack on Pakistani military emerged in 2010 when a British extremist group was found trying to recruit senior Pakistani officers. The group, Hizb Tahrir, is a British-origin and licensed religious extremist group. It uses gullible British Muslims to make inroads in countries in the Middle East and Central Asia. Saudi and Egyptian intelligence established the group’s links to British intelligence back in the 1990s and this led to some tense moments in Riyadh and Cairo’s relationship with London. The British group no longer operates in those countries. After 9/11, it apparently shifted operations to Pakistan and Central Asia. Unlike Cairo and Riyadh, Islamabad is yet to ask London to restrain British extremists.

The anti-military bias was also apparent in the case of retired general Javed Ashraf Qazi. A couple of unknown reporters misbehaved with him in clear violation of the norms of decency and professionalism, which led the general to lose temper and call them ‘idiots’. Almost all the media reports highlighted the remark and conveniently omitted the derogatory remarks made by the two unknown reporters that triggered the unfortunate incident.

Since 2007, the government and the military have allowed extreme forms of anti-military slander to pass as freedom of expression. American media commentaries abusing our military and leveling charges without evidence were reproduced by the media without objection from PEMRA or ISPR. The serious charges made by Sethi and Jahangir were met with a shy statement from Defense Ministry asking them to register a police complaint. As elections approach, some politicians will find it easier to make anti-military statements than answer voter questions about governance issues. We are also hearing rumors that some political parties and foreign media organizations are preparing for another round of military-bashing on the occasion of the release of the findings of the judicial commission into the American military incursion in Abbottabad.

If the government and the military are serious in containing military-bashing that is demoralizing our soldiers, they should start taking legal action against those who float conspiracy theories assailing the reputation of Pakistani military. Islamabad should also put a check on foreign meddling in our media where commentators have been recruited to promote a certain agenda serving foreign strategic purposes, including demonizing our military.

Do I Hate Husain Haqqani?

A US-based Pakistani Aqil Nadeem is sympathetic to Husain Haqqani, the disgraced former ambassador of Pakistan to United States.  So he asked me a couple of questions on Facebook. My answers were brief and I'm sharing them here.

I am doing this because this is a subject I've written a lot about, professionally, since there's nothing personal at play.

Mr. Nadeem accused me of hating Mr. Haqqani. And then he accused the judicial commission probing Haqqani's role in writing a treasonous anti-Pakistan memo to US military of leaking the conclusions of forensic experts who believe Haqqani is guilty as charged.

I have no hatred or grudge against Mr. Husain Haqqani. Never met him or crossed path with him and so I have no personal agenda or feelings for him.  However, I do have very clear feelings and ideas on the need to curb the growing trend of Pakistanis being recruited to work for foreign governments. This has happened after 2002 with US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and the subsequent destabilization of the region.  The United States and Israel have treated treason harshly and we should be no different. Those who do harm to this nation and people must be pursued and tried.

The alleged acts committed by Haqqani are very serious. See this following link if you want to get a clear idea about what Haqqani did wrong in this particular case: http://j.mp/wpCNso . I also have a very clear idea on what will happen to Pakistan if we don't get tough on treason, especially when we have seen massive covert operations and recruitment by CIA inside Pakistan, activities that have little to do with the war on terror and everything to do with other strategic American goals regarding Pakistan. See this link to understand this point better: http://bit.ly/yZlyoT .

On the second point.  Mr. Nadeem is partially right.  It is unusual that the Memo Commission is yet to make its conclusions public but a report quoting unnamed sources is already out claiming the commission's judicial experts are sure Haqqani is guilty of treason.

This leak is not unusual. But I am not sure there is deliberate leaking of information by Memo Commission.

If you live in Pakistan, you'd know there are hardly any secrets here. When GHQ and ISI requested closed-door meetings to brief the parliament last year, a lot of the info leaked out to TV and papers by evening and next day. When the forensic testing was taking place in London in Haqqani's case, there were diplomats and employees of the Pakistan High Commission in the building, their assistants, local Pakistani journalists, members of the commission, their support staffers, the forensic experts and their assisting teams. Anyone could have leaked the info.  It is incorrect to accuse the Memo Commission itself of doing this.

If the commission was leaking, it should have happened before too but didn't.

Then there are the diplomats in London. Haqqani doesn't have any allies or friends in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They hate him en masse over there. So anyone could have leaked this info about Haqqani's culpability in writing the anti-Pakistan memo. 

From Mike Wallace To Judith Miller

One of the greats of television journalism is dead. He passed away Saturday night at a caring home in the United States. 

At 93, Mike Wallace leaves behind a tremendous legacy. There is little question that American ingenuity takes the credit for the rise of TV journalism in the world. Mr. Wallace belonged to a generation of American TV professionals who set the standards for what we recognize globally today as news television. 

That generation of American journalists set the bar very high. 

That's the reason why the US media became so influential in the world. It certainly didn't happen because America had a formidable military power. 

What is unfortunate is that influential parts of US media failed to maintain the standards set by Mr. Wallace's generation, of rigorous questioning of authority. And of maintaining a credible distance between journalism and authority. Certainly the media's relationship with government must not be confrontational. But it should not be prone to government manipulation at critical times, such as when the state decides to launch a war of choice characterized by deceit. 

That's what happened with Judith Miller who misled The New York Times, the American people and the world on Iraq and the links between terrorists and WMD.  But she was not alone. NYT editors helped her and the paper become a PR arm for the government. It took one of those editors eight years to come clean on this. 

It gets worse. In recent years, some American editors willingly provided accreditation to intelligence agents disguised as journalists. It happened in the case of Roxana Saberi, caught red handed in Tehran spying for Central Intelligence Agency. She was released under a deal whose terms remain secret but appear to include a commitment on her part never to speak to US media about what she was doing in Iran. She was not a journalist and yet an editor of an American newspaper issued her a press card as cover for spying for CIA in another country. 

After 2002, a new type of journalism invaded US media and we in Pakistan experienced it firsthand. All of a sudden there was a rush of 'news reports' and opinion pieces all seemingly coming from diverse outlets quoting unnamed sources but reading from the same talking points: Pakistan is evil, nukes are up for grab, and this is a place worse than Iraq and hence needs to be fixed. 

None of this has anything to do with Mr. Wallace's legacy. 

And yet his passing provides us an opportunity to remember what endeared America to the world. It is the pure American ingenuity personified by Mr. Wallace's creed. That's the real face of America that the world should see. Not the militaristic, deceitful and the warmongering one personified by Ms. Miller, Ms. Saberi and those who backed them. Recently, this Miller-Saberi side of America has turned hateful, with the near assassination of Gabrielle Gifford and the brutal murder of an Iraqi mother in an American suburb. 

It's been a long way from Mike Wallace to Judith Miller. But it is Wallace that represents what's good about America. Let's stick to that. 

Me, Saleem Safi And One Indian

Let me share something interesting. Last night known columnist and TV personality Saleem Safi and I were part of a panel discussion on PTV's Moeed Pirzada show.

Today, an Indian tweeted: 'AQ showing his ignorance. Salim Safi chewed him up.'

Now I don't know if Saleem chewed me up or if we had an ice lolly together, but it was interesting to see an Indian monitoring Pakistani talk shows closely. And he's not alone. Twitter is infested with such Indians who don't have much of a life besides commenting on Pakistani affairs considering, of course, that India is God's paradise on Earth.

So I tell him to buzz off, get a life and mind his own business.

Saleem, by the way, is a dear friend of mine. Coincidentally, I bump into him today afternoon at an Islamabad restaurant. I tell him about this hateful Indian. Saleem had a good laugh. He's not on Twitter yet so he asks me to convey a message to the Indian hatemonger. I share the message here for the benefit of everyone. So here goes:

"Ahmed & I can disagree on our local politics but when it comes to Indian policy he & I are on the same page!' - From Saleem Safi.

I tweeted this message to the Indian stalker. No reply as usual. But one of the best responses came from @i_am_ahad who sent me the following tweet:

"Give them a break sir. They're just busy being absolutely NOT obsessed with Pakistan. Their main focus is chai, na? #NotChina !

Thanks Saleem and Ahad. You both made my Saturday night.

P.S. For more info about activities of Indian hatemongers on twitter, see http://bit.ly/pACedo

P.S. After Saleem Safi left with his guest, my wife & I discovered he paid our bill in advance without our knowledge. Thx Saleem. Had I known this, I'd have asked u to leave your credit card with us for the round of green tea after the meal!

One Of The Best Comments On Bruce Riedel's Pakistan Theories

Bruce Riedel is a former CIA. He is trying to make a living perhaps by renting himself out to Indian lobbying machine in Washington. Otherwise why would any sane person advise Obama to start a confrontation with nuclear armed country of 170 million over a bunch of Islamists ranting on the streets. Isn’t it enough to show how sound his scholarship is? 

Beyond the usual platitudes on military and Islamists, or smoldering hatred of a religion and a country, what is there that is new or thought provoking in this article? Any sane person, with the exception of Indians of course, would know that it is just puffed up sensationalist garbage. 

A comment left by a reader who identified himself as Polar Bear on an article written by Riedel titled, Pakistan's Jihadist Threat: Obama's Terrorism Challenge In 2012, in December 2011.

Hillary Clinton's Quick Wit

This comes with years of training and practice but I really liked this accidental video of Mrs. Clinton in Kabul hours before she flew in to Islamabad, the world's closest capital to Kabul [a lot of people don't know this].

For those in the television news business, the video here shows the AP crew preparing to tape and 'feed' the interview back to their reporting station via satellite. So the tape is running but the interview has not started.

The cameraman and the producer probably didn't expect to get this unusual scoop: America's foreign minister caught giving her raw reaction to hearing about Gaddafi's death.

For me, two things make this short video very interesting.

One is that you don't see government officials at her level giving their natural reactions to hardcore news. If not for this chance video, we would have read somewhere that US State Department released a carefully worded statement by Mrs. Clinton on Gaddafi's death.

Not here.

Here we have a senior government official humanized. Like the rest of us, she gets the news on her cell phone and then reacts naturally.

The other thing that really caught my attention, and is the reason why I am sharing the video, is Mrs. Clinton's professionalism that is on display here.

Here she is, the foreign minister of major world power, sitting with journalists. She gets a major breaking news. And how does she react? She's calm and reasoned. Someone tries to drag more out of her but she is very matter-of-factly, saying there have been false alarms before. She avoids any displays of bravado considering that her country was in armed conflict with the now dead Libyan.

That's what really attracted me.

Gotta go now. Reading many reports on the just concluded visit of Mrs. Clinton and her high-powered delegation. A lot of info in the public domain. I also have reports from a couple of our reporters and sources talking to PakNationalists.com.  Some really exclusive stuff. For example, there was a somewhat tense moment during Mrs. Clinton's closed-door meeting with senior Pakistani diplomats at the Foreign Office. And there are some very juicy details about how Mr. David Petraeus, CIA chief, known here as 'chief anti-Pakistan propagandist', was treated by Pakistani officials, and some details about how the Zardari government surrendered our state-run media to Mrs. Clinton's media handlers to use to dish out US propaganda without being countered in any way, and there are many polite ways of doing it, like ensuring some people representing your side are invited to TV events addressed by Mrs. Clinton. Didn't happen. More on this in a few hours as we finish sifting through the piles of info.

Twitter Is Infested With Indians Spreading Hate Against Pakistan

Pakistan is a fascinating country that has generated a lot of interest. Many jobless researchers, journalists and documentary filmmakers have made a career out of becoming self-styled 'Pakistan experts': on women issues, religious schools, Islam, ISI and Kashmir. Recently, no less than the US government has turned to Sufism, not out of love for Islamic mystical orders but in the hope of pitching one group of Pakistani Muslims against another to serve American goals in our region.

So, interest in Pakistani issues is widespread and profitable. But when a large number of people from a particular country do nothing online except demonize another country, then we are confronting an organized propaganda effort. And when these hatemongers claim they are not obsessed with everything Pakistan and pretend to be the world's biggest democrats and liberals, then you know why this issue is important.

Several of our volunteers and interns working at PakNationalists.com, the Pakistani nationalist political lobbying group, are reporting something interesting. Many of them run our Twitter account @paknationalists. One of the interns, Majeda, emailed me with the following observation:

"After spending a month updating the Twitter account of PakNationalists, I noticed a strange trend. I found a large number of Indians updating and commenting on Pakistan. Some using names and others nameless. And I found unanimity in their views and direction, united in spreading hate and anti-Pakistanism. It's as if they are all one person or working for one organization. Could it be that Indians have a propaganda department funded by New Delhi and tasked with highlighting negativities and insinuations about Pakistan? Or is it simply the case of too many hateful Indians out there who are obsessed with Pakistan?  They deny this when you confront them but hating Pakistan is a constant theme on Indian television. They do this in their films, it's in their statements, in the fact that 60 Pakistanis believed Indian claims of peace and traveled to India in 2007 but were burned alive aboard a train by hateful Indians. [In contrast, not a single Indian visitor to Pakistan ever faced anything except legendary Pakistani hospitality].  Indians on Twitter avoid discussing anything Indian. They ignore endless Indian problems like massive poverty and disease, female infanticide, rising Hindu terrorism, and mass graves in Indian-occupied Kashmir. The chief suspect in the genocide of 2,000 non-Hindu Indians over 3 days nine years ago is yet to be indicted. There's so much in India to keep everyone busy. But these Indian hate campaigners won't discuss any of this. Talk to them and they'll cynically say the mass graves belong to terrorists, or that the 2,000 murdered Indians were Pakistani agents and so the genocide was justified."

Majeda's perceptive observations don't end here. She went on in her report to explain how a few Pakistani bloggers including some working for mainstream Pakistani media react to this organized Indian campaign on Twitter. These Pakistani journalists, she wrote, refuse to see how organized the Indians are on social media in spreading hate against Pakistan and Pakistanis. What's worse, these few Pakistani journalists often endorse and promote anti-Pakistan propaganda in the name of liberalism and ignore how many of these hateful Indians are religious extremists in their views and posts.

I have a Twitter account @AQpk and use it often. I spent the past three days verifying the observations of Majeda and our other social media team members. I can second her observations.

My only reaction is this: Pakistani tweeple should question these hateful Indians. Don't get into arguments with them. They are not there to exchange opinions. They have one agenda and that's spreading disinformation on Pakistan. Instead of arguing, confront them with issues India faces and ask them to mind their own business. Tell them to react to:

1. Mass graves of Kashmiris killed by India's occupation army. Ask them about 21st century's first genocide, in 2002, where 2000 Indians were killed in just three days for believing in the wrong religion.
2. Remind them of how Hindu extremists burned an Australian priest and his two underage boys alive not far from New Delhi as Indians stood by watching the priest's under-ten boys burn in flames.
3. Ask them what India is doing about being the world's Number One country in female infanticide in the world [killing baby girls at birth because it's not a boy]. India is also Number One in the world in female underage marriages. Also ask them about India's position as home to the world's biggest concentration of poverty, hunger and disease, according to various UN records. 

Many of these insecure and hateful Indians come online using fake Pakistani identities, using words such as Pashtun, Punjab and Balochistan. They try to use regional Pakistani languages to create differences.

It is important that Pakistanis see this organized Indian work against Pakistan and react to it. We need to raise this issue to answer those - Indians and Americans - who claim India wants peace but Pakistan is a hurdle. The Am-Brit media in particular conceals negative news out of India because of US and UK's strategic goals of installing India as an Anglo-American slave soldier in Asia assigned to fight future Am-Brit wars.

We want peace but we can't achieve it as long there are so many educated Indians out there intent on spreading hate.

UPDATE: This discussion cannot be complete without reading two more brief yet interesting posts:

How Hateful Indians Operate Against Pakistan - Read it at http://j.mp/ydoAEO

and;

Hateful Indians At It, Again - Read it at http://j.mp/yJXjOM

Should Pakistan Accuse Pentagon And CIA Of Murdering Rabbani?

Should Pakistan Accuse Pentagon And CIA Of Murdering Rabbani?

Ironically, the assassination removed a friend of Pakistan and served the interests of Pentagon, CIA and their Afghan allies. While avoiding confrontation, Pakistan needs to speak up and not let disinformation dominate the air waves. Here are key points that weaken American propaganda.

AHMED QURAISHI | Monday | 26 September 2011
PakNationalists.com

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—There is a reason why the United States has ignored the cold-blooded murder of ex-Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani and focused all its energies instead on the attacks on US embassy and NATO offices in Kabul.

The assassination neatly fits in with the interests of three parties: US military, CIA and their Afghan warlord allies. It might well be the first planned murder of a senior Afghan government official opposed to US meddling in Afghan reconciliation.

This is the work of the same American lobbies opposed to President Barrack Obama’s Afghan pullout plan and his defense budget cuts.

There is no credible confirmation yet on who exactly eliminated the man who served as President Karzai’s key manager of reconciliation with Afghan Taliban and someone who recently converted into a friend of Pakistan.

After the assassination, the United States military and intelligence tried to create a wedge between Kabul and Islamabad by invoking an alleged Pakistani hand. But this was effectively countered by Pakistani officials, who have become accustomed to American games. Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s quick dash to Kabul to offer condolences and support and later army chief’s cool and calm response to Leon Panetta and Mike Mullen’s anti-Pakistan outbursts helped counter the attempt to poison Karzai’s newfound understandings with Islamabad.

Rabbani’s murder removed an advocate of bringing Afghan Taliban into government, and blaming Pakistan for his murder built pressure on Karzai to sever ties with Islamabad. Such a move would have destroyed Pakistan’s strategy of working closely with Karzai – and Rabbani – to reach a deal with Afghan Taliban and re-empower the Pashtuns despite American opposition.

In short, it is Pakistan that should be raising questions about the mystery of who killed Mr. Rabbani and not vice versa.

The only party that was well prepared to make the most out of Rabbani’s murder was Pentagon and CIA. Both of them moved quickly on two fronts: domestic politics and Pakistan. Domestically, the Panetta-Mullen duo organized a joint anti-Pakistan briefing on 22 September and later Mullen appeared before US Senate armed services committee.

The domestic objectives of Pentagon and CIA from this anti-Pakistan campaign are:

1.    Save the skin of US military and intelligence officials responsible for security lapses in Afghanistan

2.    Dodge accountability

3.    Send a message that major cuts in defense budget won’t be acceptable, and

4.    Underline that Afghanistan continues to require foreign military and intelligence presence

Afghanistan today is CIA’s largest base of operations anywhere in the world. The agency is loath to abandon an outpost that gives it direct access to the backyards of several strategic nations at once: Iran, Pakistan, China and Russia. No sane strategist would let go of such an opportunity. Mr. Rabbani’s peace mission may not have shown initial signs of success but it had already upset the policy direction favored by US military, intelligence and their Afghan warlord allies. India was also skeptical about the Rabbani-Karzai plans. Ending the isolation and punishment of the Pakhtun and incorporating them into Afghan power structure has never appealed to these parties. Another common denominator among these parties is their expressed anti-Pakistanism.

In fact, whoever assassinated Mr. Rabbani was also aiming at ensuring that Afghanistan remains an anti-Pakistan outpost. Islamabad has advocated ending the policy of isolating the Pashtun and worked hard to convince Mr. Karzai that friendship and respect for the legitimate interests of both Afghanistan and Pakistan is in both nations’ interests and would benefit stability in the region. Mr. Rabbani had made several overtures to Pakistan in recent months. In January he used the platform of Geo television to address Pakistanis. He spoke in Urdu as a special gesture.

PAKISTAN’S RESPONSE

Pakistan is pursuing the right policy with regards to American provocations. What is lacking in this policy is the media edge. For example, several Pakistani officials have sent strong direct and indirect messages to Washington recently. The list includes the Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, Interior Minister, Chief of Army Staff and ISI director. But Pakistan faces a sweeping campaign of demonizing the country. This American policy continues since 2004. Both political and military establishments have failed to counter the American narrative. The danger in the massive American campaign is that it paves the way for stronger future actions and limits global support for Pakistani positions. An example is the intense propagandist reporting on Iraq’s WMD in 2002 which helped Washington invade that country on fake evidence.

We need to become more overt in questioning US positions with regards to several key issues. This includes:

1.    CIA support and safe havens for terrorists meddling in Balochistan

2.    TTP’s easy access to US weapons

3.    The freedom of movement granted to anti-Pakistan terrorists inside US-controlled Afghan territory

4.    The intense demonization of Pakistan primarily and largely in mainstream US media as part of an unstated American policy

5.    Transforming US-controlled Afghanistan into a hub for anti-Pakistan forces in the region

6.    Meddling in Pakistani politics

7.    Buying out Pakistani media and planting mouthpieces in print and TV.

We should also review the argument that we can’t abandon America’s war on terror to ensure US aid flow and to fight domestic extremism. Washington will keep Pakistan afloat but will continue to drag its feet on key strategic issues such as energy generation and access for Pakistani textiles to US market. The US won’t sign any written agreements on CIA’s illegal activities inside Pakistani territory and airspace. As for domestic extremism, apart from TTP terror group that is linked to the Afghan mess, all other forms of domestic extremism are an internal Pakistani issue and should be delinked from America’s Afghan war.

All of this strengthens the argument that we need to declare an end to our direct participation in America’s Afghan war, known as the war on terror. Bilateral Pak-US cooperation to find an end solution in Afghanistan can continue. The move will give us a chance to redesign our relations with Washington and get rid of the verbal commitments made earlier.

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An English Racist In Pakistan

Imagine a Pakistani young man migrating to Britain, making it big on British television, getting the British passport out of turn as a goodwill gesture by the government, and then using his newfound fame and money to bash the English: accuse them of massacres against the Scotts and the Irish, and calling them names such as 'degenerates'.

That's exactly what George Fulton did in Pakistan. He landed here sometime around 2002. He's married to a Pakistani girl who I suppose is British-Pakistani. George, who is tall, fat and goofy, is not exactly TV material but his story impressed a young TV producer.
Geo was a rising new TV network in Pakistan at the time [it tops the charts these days]. Some creative producer there spotted the tall, fat and goofy George and hired him for a new show, George Ka Pakistan, or George's Pakistan, the story of a young Englishman who wants to make Pakistan his new permanent home.

You have to understand how big a deal this show was at the time. Until 2002, Pakistanis had only seen one television channel their whole lives: the state-run PTV.  Geo was new and stunning. And then this show where an Englishman travels across the country getting to know Pakistanis and talking to them about moving to their country.

Of course, Pakistanis liked the fact that this 'bloke' was not only moving to their country but was also married to a Pakistani girl.

Flush with fame and money, he and his wife were hired by another television network to host its morning show. The two were highly paid and were invited to parties and mingled with the high and mighty of Pakistan. So much so that Mr. Shaukat Aziz, the prime minister during President Musharraf's government, granted George Pakistani citizenship, ignoring procedure.

Until last year, Mr. and Mrs. Fulton were basking in the glory.  But ever since Mr. Fulton lost his daytime job at the morning show, he's become bitter. With no high-paying job offers coming his way, he turned against the country.

There's nothing wrong in criticism, but outright racism? Please.

Mr. Fulton believes Pakistanis are responsible for the massacres that accompanied Pakistan's War for Independence in 1947. What he's saying is that Pakistanis killed Indians by the thousands in that war, which is a historical fallacy believed only by a few Indianized Englishmen.

Not just that, Mr. Fulton has taken it upon himself to ask Pakistanis to revolt against the Pakistani military and the country's spy services because, in his view, they are no good.

Good God.

We in Pakistan face daily dosages of CIA-produced propaganda material duly published by the likes of New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Der Spiegel. It's a concerted campaign that's been going on for the past five years or more. And here comes Mr. Fulton to offer his two cents, or pennies.

This is why I just couldn't stop laughing as I read Mr. Ghalib Sultan's excellent op-ed on Mr. Fulton [Click here to read it, or follow this link http://www.paknationalists.com/2011/03/03/an-englishman%e2%80%99s-anti-pakistan-rant/ ].