Pakistan's Wrong Debate On US Ties

Today, The News International published an opinion I wrote on resetting Pakistan-US ties, appropriately titled, Re-Engaging US.

My argument on this debate is simple. The recommendations that the Parliamentary Committee on National Security proposed are good but not enough.

We are having the wrong debate.

We are discussing reopening the US and NATO supply road. We are talking about containers, trucks, drones and money.

The real issue is that the United States has taken over Pakistani presidency. It struck a deal in 2006 and 2007 that decided who will be the next Pakistani president. Washington is pumping money into Pakistani media. It refuses to blacklist BLA as a terror group and is shielding BLA and TTP terrorists in Switzerland and Afghanistan, respectively. Washington owes Pakistan close to a billion dollars for using our bases and facilities for the Afghan war. It has been using that money to blackmail us. It wants to bring India into Afghanistan, has granted India access to civil nuclear technology and continues to blackmail our nuclear program in Geneva.

Considering all of this, the least we can do is to be honest. All of the above has to be part of the agenda of resetting Pak-US ties. Simply talking about restoring the supply road is ridiculous.

And what about the aerial corridor? Are we going to tax the goods flying through our airspace to Afghanistan? How come there's no mention of this in the parliamentary recommendations?

Someone also needs to ask the Zardari government why he quietly decided to reopen the aerial corridor for Americans on 'humanitarian grounds'? And is it possible for his compassion to extend to the seven Pakistani widows and the sixteen Pakistani orphans left behind by the deliberate American attack on 26/11?

How Pakistan Protects Treason

We released a traitor back in 1969 despite strong evidence. Two years later he led an insurgency in support of an Indian invasion of Pakistan. Today we have released another traitor with a proven track record of working to blackmail Pakistan. I'd like every patriotic Pakistani to remember three things:

1. How our political parties, politicians and judiciary have worked together, passively, to protect and free a traitor. It’s as if the country’s security is the concern of ISI or the military and not the collective responsibility of politicians and others.

2. How the US worked overtime to get Husain Haqqani released, an American asset beyond a shadow of doubt. The way the US government issued a statement welcoming his escape from Pakistan is a telltale sign.

3. How a sitting Member of Parliament, Farahnaz Isphahani, and Haqqani’s spouse, landed in Washington to lobby against Pakistan, its military and its intelligence community. She privately told a British newspaper she escaped Pakistan because she was afraid the country’s military would kidnap her. Bad for her, the British journalist published this off-the-record comment, forcing her to issue a clarification. The statement shows deep malice against the country’s national security institutions. It proves how Haqqani and his boss, President Zardari, is every bit guilty of the contents of The Memo. [If you haven’t seen this brief, point-by-point reading into The Memo, please do. It is not every day that one sees a first-class evidence of what treason looks like. For Urdu version, click here.]

Last, the reluctance of our military establishment to take a decisive stand on this case and preferring instead to avoid a confrontation with the pro-US government is understandable but disturbing.

This attitude is part of the general ailment that afflicts our failed political system. It is not difficult to see how this country will get out of anyone’s control down the road. A big and drastic change is required. [Wait for new ideas in this regard, expected to be floated next month in a special ceremony in Islamabad. The event will use the platform of Project For Pakistan In 21st Century, an independent Islamabad-based think tank.]

Regarding The Memo, I will spare our military harsher criticism because I understand that it is busy trying to limit the damage of the 2002-2011 years. Good luck guys doing that. But remember: our homeland is beyond correction through installments. The state can be restructured top down. It requires good Pakistanis, civilians and uniformed, men and women of will more than anything else.

Hateful Indians At It, Again

Pakistan faces a political crisis, the result of a failed democracy and fake democrats. But who is more excited about this? It is the Indians, who surface like autumn frogs at every story concerning Pakistan. They offer themselves as top experts on anything Pakistani. And their arrogant refrain is becoming laughable to everyone: 'Since we're a democracy, we can lecture Pakistan as experts.'

Today there is a political crisis of sorts in Pakistan, where a pro-US government faces collapse thanks to an angry public opinion, corruption cases in courts, and decisions by this government that amount to serious national security breaches. 

You would think American news organizations would invite Pakistanis to speak about their country and explain it to the world. Not so. The purpose of most US officials, think tanks and media these days is to demonize Pakistan. So some of these anti-Pakistan Americans prefer to invite hateful Indians to do the job of explaining Pakistan to the world. 

The latest frog to leap, so to speak, is Mr. Sadanand Dhume, a self-styled Pakistan expert working for American Enterprise Institute. American think tanks receive a lot of funding from various US government departments. They have turned anti-Pakistan a decade ago as part of a plan to paint Islamabad as the enemy, ally US with India, contain China and occupy Russia's central Asian backyard. 

In fact, there is a consistent effort to put the US on a warpath with Pakistan.

In the last decade, the American academia and media has churned out more anti-Pakistan stories than India ever did. To solidify the new anti-Pakistanism in the United States and brainwash the good American people into hating one more country and people, a large number of hateful Indians have been recruited into the think tanks and media organizations. 

So there is a political crisis today in Pakistan, the result of a government working on protecting the interests of a foreign country, the United States, more than the interests of Pakistan. No wonder the vast majority of Pakistanis are up in arms against this government. A key aide in this government, a former envoy to Washington, faces possible treason charges for allowing hundreds of CIA operatives into Pakistan and turning this country into another American war zone and weaken it in favor of Indian strategic interests. Go to Pakistani online forums of every stripe and color and you will hear the worst things said about the government of President Zardari.

But the hateful Indians working in the US are up in arms defending this government.

Mr. Dhume appears today in the Wall Street Journal. This is a professional business paper. But its editors appear to have outsourced its Foreign Desk to CIA analysts, old and serving colleagues of leading independent thinkers like Bruce Riedel, for example. Tho Foreign Desk of this paper is anti-Pakistan and often acts as conduit for CIA planted stories on Pakistan, Russia, China and other countries. 

Pretending to be a Pakistan expert, Mr. Dhume begins his masterpiece today with this boring cliche:

'Who gets to decide when a democratically elected government's time is up? To the average Japanese, Indian or American, the answer is obvious: the same people who voted it into office in the first place. Not so for the average Pakistani.'

I have issue here with India's democracy, which I will explain shortly. 

The Indian writer claims that an elected government in Pakistan will not complete its term because the military will topple it. 

In all honesty, he is either lying or is a propagandist on an agenda.

Either Mr. Dhume lacks information and research skills, which brings into question his positions as researcher and columnist at AEI and WSJ. Or he is outrageously lying for disinformation purposes, which simply proves he's one of those seasonal Indian frogs that leap out on every Pakistani story. 

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan [HRCP] is often accused of being anti-military. I find many of their reports biased against the military and supportive of anyone working against Pakistani military, even if they are terrorist recruits into anti-Pakistan groups that enjoy refuge in US-controlled Afghanistan. 

But a senior director of HRCP, Mr. I. A. Rehman, concedes in an op-ed in The News International on Sunday that Pakistani military is abiding by the law in dealing with the pro-US government of President Zardari. 

Here is a quote:

'[Chief of Army Staff] General Kayani, the army chief, has given the country’s politicians a lesson in tactics. While politicians often opt for knee-jerk responses to serious matters or follow their staffers’ improvisations, the general has chosen to play by the book. He was prompt in answering the Supreme Court’s notice and thus distanced himself, in this case at least, from the politicians who are getting flak for avoiding compliance with the judiciary’s directives. He sent his statement to the Defense Ministry, as per rules. If the ministry did not follow the procedure laid down in the Rules of Business inscribed in a moth-eaten file of 1973, he cannot be blamed. That makes the PM angry at a time when he needs to be cooler than cucumber.'

This analysis is not unique. Most observers in Pakistan agree that the military has done the right thing. It has given its opinion to the government through proper channels on matters concerning national security. It refrained from destabilizing the government.

It is also a fact that, under the current Chairman Joint Chiefs, Army Chief, Air Force and Navy chiefs, the military as a whole has become apolitical more than ever. 

The current crisis in Pakistan is not about 'civil-military relations' or 'civilian authority over the military' as Indian propagandists like Mr. Dhume are trying to portray. 

This is a crisis about an incompetent government that has lost the trust of the people who voted for it.

Is the military trying to overthrow this government?

If anything, it is this failed democratic government that is doing everything it can to provoke the military into a coup. This government has gone as far as misleading a Chinese newspaper into publishing an interview with Zardari's prime minister attacking Pakistani military [The Chinese paper has withdrawn the interview since.] The military is trying to help this government complete its five-year term. The ruling PPPP can ensure this by removing tainted characters from its senior positions and replacing them with cleaner people. Let the tainted, corruption-ridden people face the courts without destabilizing democracy. But this is not happening because the party is firmly controlled by the tainted and the corrupt. 

Now I come to the Pakistan obsession of hateful Indians, like Wall Street Journal's Mr. Dhume.

India has the world's biggest concentration of poverty and disease. The world's biggest genocide against baby girls occurs in India every year. See India's Deadly Secret at http://bit.ly/tHVRHI . By virtue of the size of the poor, India faces a host of other gigantic problems related to public hygiene and health. The Indian government is rich, with up to $300 billion dollars in savings. But it won't share this money with the poor. Instead, the money is being spent on militarization because Americans [such as AEI that Mr. Dhume works for] are busy convincing India it is destined to be a superpower, crush Pakistan and take on China. Despite massive arms purchases, the Indian military is yet to deliver. See Indian Military Might Is Overplayed at http://bit.ly/xvcvLJ .

The quality of Indian democracy is questionable. Low-caste Hindus are raped and murdered with impunity. Girls are buried alive. All non-Hindu minorities are persecuted. Most British and American news bureaus in New Delhi hide the truth from readers back home mainly because London and Washington want to see India continue to challenge China and act as an Anglo-rented soldier in Asia. That's cheaper than sending US and UK soldiers to die in faraway lands. 

All of this should have left serious academic men and women like Mr. Dhume busy for the next decade. But no. They are busy with Pakistan because they are working on an agenda. 

Nowhere is that agenda clearer than on Twitter, where hordes of Indians are busy with nothing else except Pakistan. See Twitter Is Infested With Indians Campaigning Against Pakistan at http://bit.ly/pACedo .

India saw the first genocide of 21st century, in 2002, when more than 2000 Indian citizens were butchered and burned alive in a single Indian city in the course of three days. Their mistake was believing in the wrong religion. Hindu extremist mobs have also burned alive an Australian missionary and his two under-ten boys as they slept in their car. Their crime? The father and sons used to distribute clothing and food to poor Indians. They were Christian. This crime occurred in 2000 and extremist Hindu groups that were involved continue to operate with impunity. 

In 2007, some 50 Pakistanis believed Indian claims of peace and booked seats on a 'peace train' traveling to New Delhi from Pakistan. They were burned alive midway and the attack was blamed by the Indians on Pakistani intelligence. It turned out that Hindu terrorist groups collaborated with serving Indian intelligence officers to kill the Pakistani visitors. India is yet to punish the culprits and the blood of 50 Pakistanis remains unaccountable with a pro-US government in power in Islamabad that refuses to pursue the case. 

The US is turning into an exporter of extremism. Last year activists had to force Harvard University to expel an Indian politician who used his teaching course to spread hate. See Harvard Drops Indian MP Subramanian Swamy's Courses at http://bit.ly/s5dQYz . Why would Harvard harbor a hatemonger like that? For the same reason that Wall Street Journal invites an Indian like Dhume to explain Pakistan.

The Norwegian massacre suspect Anders Behring Breivik said last year his hate ideology was influenced by American evangelists. 

Good Americans and Indians need to watch these promoters of hate and war and stop them. Mr. Sadanand Dhume can begin with getting busy with improving the lives of hundreds of millions of poor Indians instead of promoting war at his well-paid jobs at AEI and WSJ.

Tunisia & Pakistan: Ben-Ali, Zardari & Kayani

I remember the time when President Zain Al Abidine Ben Ali seized power in Tunisia in 1987. I was 15, a young political junkie attending an Arabic school. A Lebanese friend came to me and said his countrymen and women in the south, where Lebanese Shia villages abound, flocked to the Tunisian embassy in Beirut because they were impressed by the name of the new Tunisian president which resembles the name of one of the key historical Shia Muslim figures.

Of course, religious myths had not place in the mind of the new Tunisian strongman. Tunisia is a Muslim country but staunchly non-religious at government level, with an educated population, and known more for its artists and musicians, books and world-class touristic resorts than anything else.

Since its independence in 1956, it was ruled by El Habib Bou Rgeiba, a Tunisian nationalist who turned his country into one of the most modernist Arab nations. In his early years, Iraq's Saddam Hussain was impressed by Bou Rgeiba's reforms and implemented some of them, turning Iraq into a powerhouse for education and learning before the war with Iran destroyed everything.

President Ben-Ali took charge from an ailing Bou Rgeiba in 1987 and ruled ever since.

While culture, theaters, education, sports and arts were encouraged, political dissent was not tolerated.  China, for example, has allowed the young Chinese many avenues to release their energy through the Internet and social networking, online and offline, with supervision when necessary. No such room in Tunisia. The ability to adapt to change while protecting national interest is essential.  President Ben-Ali was protecting Tunisian stability but failed to adapt to a new economy and society. People can live with a strong government as long as they are busy in making and spending money, which is the core of a healthy economy. Overlooking this dynamic was a mistake that President Ben Ali has paid for yesterday, when he had to escape the country after weeks of demonstrations against corruption and inflation.

An army officer and a former head of Tunisian military intelligence and later in charge of external intelligence, President Ben-Ali was forced out by his own military because of the way he handled protesters, killing around 90 protesters and injuring close to one thousand. The protesters were only against the rise in essential food items and general corruption of the ruling elite.

The military sealed Tunisia's airspace and effectively secured all borders. Some relatives of Sarah Trabolsi, the second wife of the president, were arrested by the military as they tried to board a plane out of the country.

The military did not approve of President Ben-Ali's high-handedness and eased the president out. The people have welcomed the military intervention, and emergency rule is in effect now in the country. The new temporary president Mohamad El Ghanouchi has called on "all sons and daughters of Tunis ... to show national spirit and unity and help our nation pass this difficult stage."

LESSONS FOR PAKISTAN

It is just a guess but two people must be watching the Tunisian news closely: President Asif Ali Zardari and Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.

President Ben-Ali's departure is bad news for our president. It shows that such departures are possible after all and no amount of 'revenge democracy' ['democracy is the best revenge' is one of Mr. Zardari's best catchphrases] can prevent such an ending. 

The Pakistani ruling elite is not just incompetent. It is ineffective, conducts uncivilized politics, and has almost no vision for the country's past, present or future. What is worse is that the Pakistani ruling elite will not allow any mechanism for new Pakistani faces or talents to emerge. This stagnation is what led to President Ben-Ali's escape.

You can add one more charge in the Pakistani case that does not exist in the Tunisian example: Pakistani politics have splintered along linguistic lines, dividing Pakistanis and enticing them to internal warfare. The country's constitution does not allow our parties to do this but there is no one to stop them.

As for Gen. Kayani, his and his colleagues' worry is simple. They do not want to find themselves in a situation where the military intervenes again in a traditional way and clean the mess, like the Tunisians have done. Pakistan needs to create viable state institutions to run the country. The military realizes the importance of this to avoid a meltdown.  But such a meltdown is almost knocking at Pakistan's door. In the face of massive failures of the Pakistani political elite, the military knows it will have to step in eventually.

It is not hard to figure this out. But the million-dollar question is: What to do after an intervention. Traditional-style coups, where the army chief steps in and takes charge, like Pervez Musharraf had done, can no longer work. Whoever is in charge after a meltdown, tough decisions will have to be made to restyle the political system by removing crippling bottlenecks in the constitution and laws and in a manner that would stop political parties from becoming personal and family fiefdoms and allow for a healthy and civilize political growth and practice.

Like Tunisia, Pakistan will have to find indigenous solutions. Lectures and recipes from Washington and London won't help. The Tunisians have clear red lines in this regard. But not in Pakistan, which is a contributing factor to constant instability.

Sindh Is Not A Card, Mr. Zardari

A large Sindhi cap is permanently displayed at Ayub Park, Rawalpindi.

There is a clear stench of deceit in Sindh Culture Day, being celebrated across Pakistan's Sindh province tomorrow. It has nothing to do with Sindh or with culture. In all likelihood, it's President Asif Ali Zardari's latest trick to blackmail his political opponents.

After all, what's the point in political groups taking out rallies waving the Sindhi cap and dress?

Sindh's culture and language are thriving like never before. They are not under threat of any kind. Sindhi language, one of Pakistan's oldest, is growing with Internet websites, newspapers, books, and television stations. All Pakistanis identify with the culture and language of Sindh. It's our culture and language. And we all own it and swoon to the great Sufi tunes of legendaries such as Abida Parveen and Allan Faqir, and the great words of Abdulatif Bhitai and Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, the great poet and Sufi saint of Sindh.

Pakistan's modern art, music, television and theater are greatly indebted to and enriched by the contributions of Pakistani Sindhis.



A young girl in a camp for flood victims near Hyderabad

 Instead of galvanizing the people on language, Mr. Zardari could have issued a call to the people in Sindh and across Pakistan to rise again for the victims of floods who are still homeless, and a large number of them are in Sindh. In fact, it is Mr. Zardari's government that turned these poor flood victims, especially in Sindh, into beggars, queuing by the thousands at government-run camps and offices for help and often getting beaten up by police for protesting government's corruption and ineptitude.

Mr. Zardari, who owns lavish real estate in the United States, France, UAE and the UK, is not concerned about them. He is worried about his seat of power and is looking for ways to survive.

What Mr. Zardari is trying to do is to create conditions to use the Sindh Card. Which means: if my government is toppled in any way, I will whip up Pakistan's Sindhis into demanding separation from Pakistan.

This threat is not new. A Zardari aide and interior minister in Sindh's provincial government, Zulfiqar Mirza, bluntly admitted he and his boss were contemplating this after the assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Interestingly, late Mrs. Bhutto never thought of this even after the execution of late Prime Minister Z. A. Bhutto. Also, I am not sure who gave Mr. Zardari or the PPPP the right to represent Pakistani citizens who are Sindhis [or who gave the same rights to MQM, ANP, etc. to represent other languages?].

Mr. Zardari has spent three years in power and has done nothing for his hometown, Nawabshah, or his wife's hometown, Larkana, or for Sindh. When he's out of power, he and his supporters will conveniently blame Islamabad, the federation, the so-called Establishment, or the alleged Punjabi-dominated bureaucracy of neglecting his home province.

People of Sindh are patriotic Pakistanis. They are also not fools.

Not only did Mr. Zardari not do anything for his home province, he didn't even do anything for Taslim Solangi. A pregnant 17-year-old Taslim was thrown to hungry dogs by corrupt landlords in rural Sindh in 2008. Before she was ripped apart by dogs, she was forced to prematurely deliver her 8-month-old baby who was immediately thrown into a river. Her family begged for justice and never received it.

Taslim Solangi, thrown to hungry dogs

President Zardari won't help the victims of  floods, won't give justice to Taslim Solangi, but is ready to use Sindh to save his presidency.

Sindh is not a card, Mr. President. Sindh is Pakistan. Please don't poison the culture of Sindh by linking it to your politics.

Unfortunately, none of the many intellectuals in Sindh stepped forward and protested President Zardari's desperate attempts to politicize our Sindhi culture. That's because they know they will be harassed by Mr. Zardari's party that currently rules the country.

It is time that we stopped anyone in the future using language for politics and to divide Pakistanis in the name of democracy.

The federal Pakistani government should seize our languages from these political parties and own them by itself. It should not let two-bit politicians use language for politics and divide Pakistanis along linguistic lines. Parties such as PPPP, ANP, MQM, PMLN and others have no right to self-appoint themselves as representatives and owners of entire groups of Pakistanis. The federal government should pass legislation to stop political parties from becoming linguistic parties. Democracy and political parties should not become tools for linguistic divisions. And this was certainly not the intent of the writers of our constitution.

We should have Sindh culture day and other culture days every year. But they should be organized by the federal government and celebrated nationally. Why should Sindh culture day be celebrated in Sindh only?

We need a federal government that can correct these abnormalities in Pakistani democracy.

Pro-US Cabal In Pakistan Is Angry At China Praise

The outgoing US ambassador to Pakistan needs to be congratulated for one thing: she did an excellent job of meddling in Pakistani media and politics. She is credited with organizing a pro-US cabal inside Pakistan that springs into action whenever the US is criticized in Pakistani media. Ironically, this cabal, which consists of Pakistanis, never shows equal passion when the US officials and media demonize Pakistan worldwide.

Ms. Patterson has not been working alone. She received full support from the ruling PPPP's media managers. That is why I am mentioning Pakistan's own wunderkid: Ambassador Husain Haqqani who is said by sources in his won party to be responsible for organizing PPPP's media plans while sitting in Washington DC.

Today the pro-US Zardari-Haqqani cabal in Pakistan [read: PPPP Media Cell] are seething with anger that I criticized Nobel's cheap shot against China. A version of my op-ed, titled, A 'Nobel' Mob Ambush, Chicago Style, was published by the blog section of the Pakistani affiliate of International Herald Tribune. The comments section makes for an interesting read.

They are livid that I linked Nobel's China swipe to the unusual wave of anti-China political ads during the current mid-term election campaign in the US. I explained how the Indian lobby in the US is contributing to the 'Blame China' campaign to divert attention from US public's anger at outsourcing jobs to India.

So guess what? The pro-US Zardari-Haqqani cabal teams up with Indian net surfers to bash China on this excellent Pakistani website.

But no one should worry: Their comments and arguments don't even begin to scratch the surface. The best answer to their ramblings cames from Mr. Ghias Ahmed whose half-line was both pithy and shrewd:

"‎2012 Nobel Prize will be paid in Chinese Yuan...".

Weekend Story That Scuttled Pak-Indian Photo-Op

This drama quietly unfolded over the weekend.

Early Sunday, a Pakistani newspaper editor receives a text message from a source in New York warning that Zardari govt. is pushing Pak foreign minister to stand for a photo-op with his Indian counterpart in NYC on the sidelines of a UN meeting. Indians were desperate for the photo to demoralize Kashmiris & show them that Pakistan is on board.

The editor called a Pakistani TV news channel and offered to break the story. By midday the story was on the air. By Monday, the Indians , the Americans and their Pakistani stooges waited with baited breath for a meeting that never happened. By evening, Pak foreign minister gave a shocking statement: He won't meet Indians for a photo-op unless they discuss their occupation of Kashmir.

A warm thank you to the timely alert from the New York source.

Click here to read the full story.

Dr. Aafia's Revenge: A Blow To US And Its Pakistani Friends

Those who wanted Dr. Aafia Siddiqui to rot in jail and never come out to tell her story got what they wanted.
Interestingly, there are Pakistanis who assisted the Americans in achieving this, [British journalist Yvonne Ridley allegedly points the finger toward one of them in her recent article].

And it doesn't matter if she's guilty or not. Most Pakistanis know she was involved al Qaeda wannabe, although there is no evidence she was part of the terror group. She appeared more as a fan than a real member.

None of this, however, justifies the wrong done to her and her three underage kids. And this wrong was done to her by both the United States and its client government(s) in Pakistan. Government officials and a few unscrupulous elements within our military, unfrotunately, played roles in this tragedy.

For us Pakistanis, her case will forever remain a blot on the face of our ruling elites, civilian and military, despite the fact that most of our civilian or military people today are simply carrying the sin of the few who did this and knew about it.

For Pakistanis, her case is now is about how Pakistani rulers have sold Pakistan, its interests, and its citizens, cheap, time and again, for a few dollars and temporary gratification.

Some 1,200 innocent Pakistanis rot in Indian jails. An equal number has been rotting in Afghan jails for almost a decade now. FBI and MI5 have been harassing and implicating innocent Pakistanis in fake cases in US and Britain since 9/11. The famous case of 11 Pakistani college students in Britain is case in point, where Prime Minister Gordon Brown created a false alarm in 2009 over a 'terror ring' that turned out to be a ruse, most probably meant to scare the British public into approving more troops for Afghanistan.

Or the case of Adnan Mirza in Houston, Texas, where FBI agents posing as American Muslims prodded the young Pakistani college student into talking about Iraq and Afghanistan during a hiking trip and the conversation was presented in court as evidence he was planning to support Taliban and Al Qaeda. A bunch of FBI agents got promotions and citations while this young kid rots in jail without conviction, and without support from the Pakistan Embassy in Washington, which, instead of raising the issue of lack of evidence, is supporting FBI's contention the kid accept the charges against him and consent to deportation.

Dr. Aafia is a sign of the injustice done to Pakistanis. And this is why those who convicted and jailed her will never win.

An Abduction Blamed On Pakistani Spooks

Some government-linked politicians have been whispering to the media that ISI and MI did it because they were enraged at Mr. Cheema's coverage of the 'missing persons' issue. That might be, but what about the government avenging Mr. Cheema's groundbreaking story on how President Zardari and his aides hired Turkish female 'escorts' and failed to pay them their dues resulting in a court case in Turkey?

Click here to continue reading

Change Of System In Pakistan

It really has come to this. Newspaper columnists are crying for political change. Television commentators are demanding change. And Pakistan's younger generation, more than half of the nation's population, is emerging as the real guardian of Pakistani interest and represents a new political thought. It is demanding a complete change in Pakistan's failed political system. In fact, as this video by a Pakistani rock band Entity Paradigm show, young Pakistnis want a revolution. They are sick of an inept political elite that has been imposed on Pakistan through American and British machinations. Take a glimpse into tomorrow's Pakistan here.

How Military Nurseries Produced Pakistan’s ‘Democratic Warriors’

Military-led governments in Pakistan have failed in creating long term stability and fostering national identity, like the ruling party did in China. This failure is well known. But Pakistan’s destructive politics can’t end without understanding another major failure: How Pakistan’s democratic elite is really not democratic at all.

Forget about building a great country and a healthy and prosperous people, Pakistan’s political elite divides Pakistanis by language, sect and violent politics because it has nothing else to offer in exchange for getting elected. And with the new amendments to the Pakistani constitution, which strengthen family-run dictatorships within parties, there is hardly any chance that the able and the willing among 170 million Pakistanis will ever get a chance to lead their homeland.

In 2008, these politicians got themselves elected in the name of democracy. But even that credential is questionable.

Retired Lieutenant General Faiz Ali Chishti, who played a major role during the military-led government of former President Gen. Zia-ul-Haq between 1977 and 1988, gave an interesting insight earlier this week in Lahore into the relationship between failed politicians and military coups.

His remarks are important because he said several things that are new and must be noted.

FAKE DEMOCRATIC WARRIORS

Mr. Chishti said that “Several (democratic) champions became leaders while sitting in the laps of army generals.” He listed them as follows:

1. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, former Prime Minister of Pakistan [Benefactor: Field Marshal Ayub Khan].

2. Nawaz Sharif, former Prime Minister of Pakistan [Benefactor: Gen. Zia-ul-Haq]

3. Altaf Hussain, the exiled British-Pakistani leader of MQM [Benefactors: Gen. Zia-ul-Haq and Gen. Pervez Musharraf]

4. Jamaat Islami [Benefactors: Gen. Zia-ul-Haq and Gen. Pervez Musharraf]

The irony is that all of them claim that Pakistan’s military should not be involved in major internal decisions when necessary but they never explained why they accepted military help in ascending to power in the first place. Interestingly, despite being discredited as failed and inept, these politicians keep getting second and third chances thanks to the military’s failure to introduce real reforms after every coup. [Also thanks to frequent US and British meddling in our politics for their own objectives. Unfortunately, the Pakistani military has so far been unable to prevent it and, under Musharraf, even took it to new heights!]

Moreover, Pakistani military has maintained an unwritten alliance with this failed political elite, always handing power back to it after every intervention without any attempt to open doors to middle and lower-class Pakistanis to participate in running their country, especially when they have proven to be more creative in taking Pakistan forward in many areas.

One example is Gen. Musharraf, who came to power with a promise to inject new faces into a stagnant system. Eight years later, he not only failed to do that but ended up restoring some of the worst failed politicians back to power as his replacement. The only credible new political face from the late Musharraf period is Member of National Assembly Marvi Memon. To be fair to her, she was a late entrant who proved her mettle on her own in the two and half years since Musharraf’s departure. With her patriotic and inclusive views, a large segment of Pakistan’s younger generation identify with her. But she stands no chance of moving up in a system designed to keep people like her from exercising real power.

THE LOOPHOLE

Mr. Chishti pointed out another irony that exposes the duplicity of the present political elite in Pakistan. An independent Election Commission is what stops military interventionists from legitimizing their rule. So if someone wants to stop future military interventions being endorsed by the country’s courts and parliaments, creating such an independent election commission is the first step. But strangely, despite all the noise over the recent constitutional amendments, called the 18th Amendment, none of the political parties pushed for an independent election commission. The reason is that an independent election commission would also enforce democracy within the parties, challenging lifetime party presidents and ‘chairpersons’.

COUP DECISION INSTITUTIONAL

He said the decision to impose military rule, or Martial Law, is never a personal decision of one man but a collective one of the Army High Command and is a result of full spectrum assessment of the state of the nation.

WHY MILITARY INTERVENES

Since a military coup is not a one-man-show and hence there is no question of personal ambition, then the right question to ask, says Mr. Chishti, is ‘Why the military intervenes?’ He suggests that tackling the reasons would reduce the possibility of such interventions.

Wise words. But they are falling on deaf ears. The mother of all ironies is that when Pakistan Army has a chief who has gone out of his way to support democracy, and even rescued it on a couple of recent occasions, Pakistan’s democratic warriors are leading the country to a grand national failure of epic proportions with their failure to perform.

ANP Shouldn't Be Allowed To Revive Its Old Pashtunistan Agenda

A billboard in 2008 on Pakistani soil showing the map of independent Pashtunistan. ANP denied any involvement. [Picture courtesy of Online News Agency-Nov. 2008]

ANP, a party whose founders opposed the independence of Pakistan, is once again pushing its shady agenda through a manufactured crisis over the renaming Pakistan's NWFP province.  By doing this, the party is trying to sow seeds of doubt in the minds of Pakistani Pashtuns, who are an integral part of the Pakistani state and one of its main pillars.

One of the heroes of the Pakistan Independence Movement had actually proposed the name Afghania for the province. So respect for the Pashtun identity, which makes the larger Pakistani identity, has always been there. But the manner in which ANP is whipping up linguistic sentiments, coupled with a daring attempt within the Parliament to change the constitution to give provinces unprecedented freedoms, indicates something bigger is happening than just renaming a province and revising the constitution.

A few months after ANP came to power in 2008, billboards showing the map of 'Greater Pashtunistan' mysteriously appeared in some parts of Pakistan's northwestern province. 'Greater Pashtunistan' is supposed to replace a disintegrated Pakistan, according to the proponents of this theory.

The ANP denied any link to the billboards at the time.

But whoever was behind that billboard knew there was a lot of talk going on in official and informal circles in the United States about the concept of Pashtunistan.  This was probably part of a larger psy-ops program that aimed at pressuring Pakistan to align itself more with the US agenda.

Starting sometime in 2007, the US media and think-tanks launched a campaign for independent Pashtunistan and independent Balochistan. This campaigned has slowed but has not completely ended.  Washington DC was the venue for several seminars attended by advocates of this theory. The origin of these theories is India, where analysts with links to the Indian security establishment have been advocating the breakup of Pakistan on linguistic basis, feeding on real grievances created by a failed bureaucratic and political ruling system. Indian officials have always bragged privately to their foreign guests about how they successfully used this method to cut Pakistan to size in 1971. [Click here to read how Indian analysts introduced the idea of breaking up Pakistan along linguistic lines to Washington after 9/11].

Blatant anti-Pakistanism in the US media has gradually decreased during the past year, mostly because US officials are now showing respect to Pakistan to gain its support to avert a defeat in Afghanistan.  Much credit for this change also goes to the Pakistani military establishment and to the army chief. 

But it is not completely over. While Pakistan has friends in Washington and others agree they need Pakistan, the anti-Pakistan elements in the US establishment took their latest 'seminar' on Pakistani Balochistan to Bangkok, apparently because such an event on Thai soil won't draw attention to its US backers. 

There is a lot of circumstantial evidence that lends credibility to the theory that ANP's rise to power was part of the secret understandings that former President Musharraf agreed to with the Bush administration in 2006 and 2007 on the shape of future government in Pakistan.

Now three pro-US parties [ANP, PPPP, MQM] are running the show in Pakistan. PPPP has been busy enacting the American agenda of containing Pakistan's military and intelligence from within. This has failed. MQM is campaigning for a bill on provincial autonomy that will effectively end Pakistan as a strong country and turn its provinces into semi-independent states that can secede anytime they choose. This will bring Pakistan one step closer to the fate of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. 

As for ANP, instead of improving services and governance, the party is creating language-based hatred and divisions in Pakistan under the guise of renaming NWFP, which is a nonissue. Pakistanis are suffering a massive energy shortage and a general decline in the quality of life across the nation while these failed politicians are wasting time on creating ethnic- and linguistic-based divisions among Pakistanis.

The above is probably the most accurate context for understanding the latest political crisis in Pakistan over renaming a province and over passing a radical plan for changes in the constitution that would weaken the Pakistani state.

Pakistan will continue to suffer this type of instability as long as some of its political parties continue to work on foreign agendas, and as long as Pakistan's people and the armed forces tolerate foreign governments creating and maintaining proxies at the highest levels in Islamabad.

Lahore Bombings: Indians Are Suspects, So Are Americans

US Ambassador complains to Pakistani Government that media reports have exposed the location of American residences inside Lahore’s military zone, but fails to mention why US personnel with diplomatic cover have been found at wrong places, sometimes carrying weapons that diplomats are not supposed to

Lahore’s military zone is not only exposed to covert Indian operatives but also to undercover US agents with their suspicious heavy-duty equipment placed in several houses inside a gated community right in the heart of the city’s military area. This has been going on since 2007. 

    

CLICK TO ENLARGE

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—The eastern city of Lahore is exposed not only to the Indians who have been sending terrorists to plant bombs in public places for the past quarter of a century, but also to the Americans who expanded their covert presence inside Pakistan in the last three years of President Musharraf’s rule.  After the return to democracy in 2008, the US presence [beyond diplomatic requirements or disguised under diplomatic cover] is reported to have increased manifold.

Last year, Pakistanis were stunned to watch several incidents where US citizens were caught by the Military Police at checkpoints leading up to the city’s military zone known as Cantt.  Most of the time, these US individuals refused to say what business took them to the military area. The US Consulate in Lahore is located far away from this zone, which compounded the mystery. These US nationals also refused to allow the police to check their vehicles, which is a standard procedure that all Pakistanis undergo considering the terrorist attacks. On a couple of occasions, US vehicles whose drivers refused to cooperate with MP caused long queues at checkpoints. Military Police officers impounded these vehicles. This led to US officials complaining to their media that Pakistan was ‘harassing’ US diplomats.

But the truth is that the Americans have covertly maintained an outpost of several houses in a gated community right in the heart of the city’s military zone. This zone is so sensitive that a half-constructed Sheraton Hotel lies abandoned on one of Cantt’s main streets because the Pakistani military complained that the new hotel’s upper floors provided an easy view of the residence of the commander of the Pakistan Army Corp that guards Pakistan’s northeastern border with India. 

This makes the covert US presence in this area intriguing to say the least. The exact location of these houses, in the elite Sarwar Colony, is shown in the pictures that accompany this report. Most of the residents of this colony are senior retired Pakistani military officers. A handful of them have apparently leased out their homes to the Americans at exorbitant rates that far exceed the normal level of leased property rates in the Colony, according to a fascinating expose published by TheNation and is reproduced below in full.

Why are we talking about a few houses rented out by Americans linked to US government in a sensitive part of the eastern city?

The reason is a wave of terror targeting Lahore over the past two years. This is not to suggest that the US government has something to do with this.  The suspicion centers on local terrorists indirectly or directly aided by intelligence operatives from multiple countries based in Afghanistan.  The point here is that the city of Lahore is exposed not only to local terrorists working with foreign handlers, but also to Indians and possibly to private American security contractors. These contractors expanded their presence in Pakistan in the past two years, mostly using diplomatic cover. The US Embassy in Islamabad under the incumbent Ambassador has been instrumental in pushing for an expanded role for private US defense contractors in Pakistan over the past two years.

Many Pakistanis feel that such penetration of Pakistan by foreign countries is detrimental to our national security and has unnecessarily exposed us to outsiders pursuing interests that may not overlap with our own.

Today, the US Embassy in Islamabad leaked key points of a letter that US Ambassador Anne W. Patterson has sent to Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi. In the letter, Ambassador Patterson complained about TheNation report on the American presence in Cantt, Lahore. More interestingly, she made a veiled threat that Pak-US relations would suffer if those Americans became targets for a terror attack. The letter was leaked to the Dawn newspaper.

The most interesting part of her letter was an acknowledgement on her part that the security of US diplomats in Pakistan is the responsibility of the Government of Pakistan. This is important because it was Ms Patterson who only a year ago was lobbying the Pakistani government to allow US private defense contractors into Pakistan and was running from one government office to another to ensure that these private US contractors are allowed to carry banned weapons anywhere in the country.

When Ms. Patterson was asked why she needed these private security contractors, she said it was to protect US diplomats. Critics said that was the responsibility of the Government of Pakistan and that the Ambassador should not cross a line. Her acknowledgement of this indicates a shift. Probably it has to do with recent understandings between Army Chief Gen. Kayani and US military officials where the army chief reportedly asked US to stop indirect methods of coercion, including media leaks, the role of private contractors in Pakistan and Afghanistan and the role of CIA in the region.

So how did the Pakistani military allow such a breach to occur in a sensitive area of Lahore?

One explanation is that the Americans moved with their gadgetry and equipment to this place sometime in late 2006 and early 2007. This means that the arrangement had the blessings of former President Musharraf.  This is significant because it means the US presence in this sensitive location is part of the sovereign understandings that Pakistan entered with the United States during that time. And no matter how damaging this is for Pakistani security interests, Islamabad and the Pakistani military are forced to put up with this foreign presence for as long as those understandings are effective.

Another explanation is that Mr. Musharraf’s regime allowed the Americans to setup shop here without the full knowledge of all the relevant branches of the Pakistani military and intelligence agencies.  If this is the case, then it is alarming indeed.

This story becomes relevant in the aftermath of a series of attacks in Lahore over the past two years, including one that targeted a visiting Sri Lankan cricket team. The strange part is that all of these attacks either target Pakistan’s allies [Sri Lankans, Chinese] or attack ordinary Pakistanis to kill the largest numbers of them.  Americans or American and British interests have never been attacked in this manner throughout this so-called war on terror that Pakistan has been executing on America’s behalf. If anything, much of this terror is linked to a proxy militia in South Waziristan that claims to be a Pakistani Taliban but receives all its arms and funding from US-controlled Afghanistan where the Indians also maintain a vast intelligence network aimed at Pakistan.

For a list of recorded incidents in Pakistan where private US mercenaries or defense contractors were caught at places where they should not be, see this story, What Robert Gates Didn’t Say - And US Media Hides - About Blackwater In Pakistan.

The question is: What are the Americans doing in Cantt’s Sarwar Colony?

The easiest answer is taking up residence. But there is something more to this than homemaking. The location indicates that the Americans want to keep an eye on movements and chatter in Cantt, which could indicate where Pakistan’s relations with India are headed. Washington is keen to convince Pakistan that India is trustworthy enough for Pakistan to move its army units away from India’s border and get busy in fighting America’s war in Afghanistan.

The Americans could also be interested in keeping an eye on some of the nearby military installations, including one of the largest Pakistan Air Force bases, and also a couple of nuclear installations. There are indications that the US is also interested in seeing the war on terror extended to the heartland of Punjab province in the mistaken belief that this would hurt the base of Pakistani military [Indian intelligence analysts have convinced their American counterparts that Pakistan’s military is all about Punjab province and hitting this province can help subdue Pakistan’s military and ensure its full alignment with US objectives.]

Here is the report published by TheNation on Feb. 21 on the covert US presence in Sarwar Colony in Cantt, Lahore, since 2007 and how scores of Pakistani families have become unwilling neighbors of foreigners they don’t want to see around:

“The mystery of why US personnel were being constantly caught entering into the sensitive area of Lahore Cantonment and thereby getting caught by the Military Police, has finally been resolved. However, in the process some serious questions have arisen.

In 2007, under the Musharraf regime, Americans moved into Sarwar Colony, located behind CSD Cantt just off Aziz Bhatti Shaheed Road. This gated colony contains around 200-250 houses and they are owned by retired or serving generals of Pakistan Army. The Americans have been comfortable ensconced here in a few rented houses since 2007 in what is a highly sensitive location. So question number one: Why were the Americans given permission to locate themselves in this area and who gave the permission?

Their activities really caught on only recently when they acquired Houses 87 and 88 (see pictures), ostensibly for the US embassy staff relocated from Peshawar to Lahore! The rents paid for these houses are also far higher than the average for the Colony which is around Rs 150,000 maximum. The Americans are paying around Rs 320,000 for each house per month.

Towards the end of the last year and the start of this year, the Americans intercepted at the Cantt bridge several times were all those coming to this location. However, these Americans refused to tell Military Police officials what their destination was inside Lahore Cantt. So question number two is: Why, if the Americans had rented these houses genuinely for residential accommodation? Linked to this is question three: How come the Military Police were not in on this vital piece of information? Why were they being kept in the dark?

When these houses were rented, in the first three months high security measures were taken for them -grilling, the glass was all changed probably to bullet proof, and infrared security devices were installed with a lighting system. Then, four months ago, big container trailers entered the colony (which is restricted) about seven or eight in number, and they were off loaded into the houses in the predawn hours. After the offloading, the security of the premises was given to Elite Force Punjab and Wackenhut private security guards. The covert usage of these buildings became apparent because anyone seen coming too close to the properties was mistreated and threatened.

Children playing in the park right in front of these two houses often threw balls inside the porches of these two houses. Usually Americans come out swearing. Once, children reported that a growling and angry American came out and flattened the ball before returning it to them.

Some of the Pakistani guards outside the two houses told residents in the neighbourhood that the Americans were transporting and installing hi-tech equipment in the houses. At least one resident in the neighbourhood reports that some of the guards took photographs of some of this equipment and showed them to the residents. One of the residents who saw the pictures reports that a US citizen was watching the guard from inside the house and came out, snatched the mobile phone and threatened the resident not to contact the guards again or come near the house.

But the real issue and core question is: Why the Americans are being allowed to use houses in this sensitive area of Lahore cantonment when there now exists a decision of the Government that foreigners cannot even enter the cantonment areas without prior permission?

To find out how the local residents are taking to their American neighbours, TheNation sent its reporter to the Colony and discovered a terrorised Pakistani community right in the heart of their own country. His account speaks for itself since of some unidentified private American security guards equipped with M4s. The offloaded stuff was professionally packed in layers of plastic and wood.”

EXCLUSIVE: This Is How US Agents Sneak Into Pakistan

  

See The Video Here

For a few hundred dollars, low-paid border guards are allowing entry into Pakistan to spies and agents of multiple foreign intelligence agencies operating in Afghanistan. In this story and video, see how a US lady entered Pakistan through Torkham on Saturday, Mar. 13, 2010, without visa and without the knowledge of Pakistani intelligence officers posted there. This happens in a country that faces terrorism exported by both US-controlled Afghanistan and its Indian ally.

BY SYED FAWAD ALI SHAH

Saturday, 13 March 2010.

WWW.PAKNATIONALISTS.COM

TORKHAM, Pakistan—Rampant corruption and a weak Pakistani state are helping the entry into Pakistan of spies and terrorists from multiple foreign intelligence agencies operating in Afghanistan. Almost all terror in Pakistan is coming from Afghanistan.

This American woman tried to sneak into Pakistan through Torkham on Afghan border today, Saturday, Mar. 13, 2010, around early afternoon. She was wearing an Afghan woman’s burqa and apparently spoke local dialects. She would have successfully crossed into Pakistan safely hidden among a group of Afghan women but something about her demeanor raised the suspicion of a Pakistani border guard.

However, the border guards, known as Khasadars, made sure that Pakistani intelligence officers posted in the area are not told about this arrest. Torkham is considered a hot station within Kasadar tribal force circles. With salaries that go less than PKR 10,000 per month [less than US$ 130], major checkpoints such as Torkham provide an extra source of income for the Khasadars through bribes from travelers.

The guards kept the woman in a room for about thirty minutes and then let her enter Pakistan in her burqa. She paid the Khasadar guards a handsome amount of money as bribe. According a source in the Khasadar Force who witnessed the whole thing, the woman didn’t panic. She appeared composed and familiar with the ways of the border guards. She knew what to do in such a situation.

Thanks to my contacts in the border force, I was able to make a cell phone video of her passport while the Khasadar chief at the checkpoint talked to her.

Her name on the passport was Zohra Rehmati, which makes her an American from either Iranian or Tajik-Afghan extract.

Over the past four years, a large number of US agents have entered Pakistan through Afghanistan. Several have been arrested in different parts of the country disguised  as Afghan men, complete with beards and Turbans and fluent in Pashto, Dari and Urdu. Unfortunately, much of this covert American activity was sanctioned first by the Musharraf government and now by the pro-US Zardari-Haqqani combine in the incumbent government.

Ms. Rehmati, if that is her real name, may or may not be a CIA operative, or one of its private contractors associated with either DynCorp or Xe International.  But such lax security in a country that is a target of terrorism, DynCorp managed to create quite a covert network in Pakistan before being busted by Pakistani security last year. DynCorp remains in Pakistan, thanks to backing from both the US Embassy in Islamabad and the pro-US government, despite repeated attempts by the country’s security officials to force the US defense contractor to wrap up its operations here.  Xe International, formerly known as Blackwater, also operated in Pakistan until 2005 before being moved to Afghanistan, according to an earlier report in the New York Times. But going by the number of incidents in Pakistan over the past couple of years where US private agents were seen operating in major Pakistani cities, it is safe to say that both contractors continue to quietly operate in Pakistan in one

Private contractors help give CIA the benefit of deniability if an agent is arrested on foreign territory.

CIA has been known to send US citizens of foreign descent to their home countries for espionage.

The most recent example is Roxana Saberi, an Iranian-American who was busted in Tehran carrying sensitive documents handed to her by an informant. Ms. Saberi was sent to Iran posing as a journalist. CIA even managed to get her newspaper accreditation from a major American newspaper. The US government was embarrassed at the arrest because Ms. Saberi was arrested red handed receiving official documents from a contact.

In Pakistan, a State that is falling apart at the seams, with no central figure or department to control the rot, is providing the perfect environment for meddling in the country not only by the United States, UK, India and other established powers based in Afghanistan, but also by a puppet regime like that of Mr. Hamid Karzai and his spymasters, who in eight years are in a good position today to wreak mayhem inside Pakistan while the politicians in Islamabad and the military in Rawaplpindi have little recourse beyond words of appeasement or caution during closed-door meetings with foreign powers in Afghanistan that are never translated into action to reestablish Pakistan’s writ domestically and in the region.

Mr. Shah is an independent journalist based in Peshawar.

A Pakistani Minister Steals US$ 20 Million From A Pakistani Ambassador

Story Broken on Facebook

A young democracy reverts back to corruption as a battle ensues between two Pakistan Government titans over a commission worth US$ 20 million

Published by Tania Khan on Facebook and reproduced here verbatim

PakNationalists.com

Pakistan hit a new high in corruption when ‘state actors’ joined a resourceful cartel to create a fake nationwide shortage in a major commodity – sugar – and made millions.

Now some very powerful people in Islamabad are on their way to hitting another jackpot: a commission between US$ 15 to 20 million on a sugar consignment meant to plug the hole created by the fake shortage.

Two senior figures in the government, a federal minister and an ambassador to a Gulf state, have locked horns to grab the millions of dollars in commission. But only one of them will win and bag the bounty.

This is also a classic case of how corruption by junior government officials is hijacked by big fish when the commission is high.

Responding to a tender floated by the federal government for the import of 600,000 tons of sugar, Al Khaleej Sugar Trading (Pvt.) Ltd. submitted a bid of US$ 740 (London sugar price) plus US$ 80 as freight and premium charges on a per ton basis.

The initial negotiations for this bid were handled by Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates Mr. Khursheed Ahmed Junejo.  Apparently the final deal that Amb. Junejo reached with Mr. Jamal al-Ghurair, the CEO of Al-Khaleej Sugar Trading, involved a hefty kickback of somewhere around US$ 15 to US$ 2o million.  In return, Mr. Junejo committed himself to pulling all the necessary strings to ensure Mr. al-Ghurair’s bid is not only accepted but that the bid is exempted from federal government’s ceiling of US$ 50 on freight and premium charges.

What Ambassador Junejo did not anticipate is that the sweet deal might go sour on him and the rewards – the commission – would be bagged by people more powerful than him in the present government in Islamabad.

At some point, federal Interior Minister Rehman Malik jumped into the fray, backed apparently by no less than the President of Pakistan. Now, according to sources in the federal government, Mr. Malik is poised to win the race for the millions in commission in the Al-Khaleej Sugar Trading deal. According to sources, Mr. Malik will grab this deal instead of Mr. Junejo thanks to backing from no less than the President. No brownie points for where the commission is bound for.  Suffice to say that it will be far from the pockets of the man who was supposed to have pocketed it in the first place.

In an agricultural country where sugar cane is a major crop, the sugar shortage crisis is highly suspicious in the first place. It has become a case of state actors backing a resourceful mafia for the exploitation of national resources.

And once again, Pakistan’s democracy is under the threat of reverting back to the well known corruption stories that resulted in the failure of the entire political system in the past.

PakNationalists.com has reproduced this report verbatim from the post of Tania Khan on Facebook where it first appeared.

Waiting For a Pakistani Mao

Just two years after the the return of Pakistan's shady democrats to power, even moderate commentators are calling for change. And in the case of commentator Ms. Anjum Niaz, they talk about revolution.

Pakistan is a country where even democracy will fail without some iron-handed intervention to set things right. Sometimes reform can't be put to vote, as I argue in my column, A Smart Coup: Why One Last Military Intervention In Pakistan Remains A Possibility. Here is an excerpt from Ms. Niaz's column today in The News International that sums up the stagnant governing culture in Pakistan these days, one that has been created by both political and military rulers, and one that needs to be changed to make Pakistan viable in the 21st century:

"Last Sunday on a PIA flight from Karachi to Islamabad, we had a VIP travel in the first-class cabin. When the flight landed in Islamabad, we were made to wait until the VIP was safely seated in his waiting Mercedes flying two flags – the Pakistan and perhaps the PPP flags. The wait for us was not long, but what was shocking was to see the car drive up to the apron, as close as it could get to the aircraft. Was the VIP a foreign guest warranting maximum security? No. He was in fact Raza Rabbani! To make sure I was not hallucinating, I double-checked with a member of the crew as we alighted. The airhostess confirmed it was the senator. Rabbani is currently chairperson of the Parliamentary Committee on National Security and also heads the Parliamentary Committee on Constitutional Reform. Do his handlers think that ordinary passengers like us are a threat to his life and therefore he must be whisked away the minute he sets foot on the ground?

"Raza Rabbani is one of the very few politicians who have been able to attain and sustain a high level of credibility in the eyes of public as well as among all the political parties," says a Google search I did on him today. "He is one politician who does not have any scandals associated with him; financial, moral, or political. He does not come from a feudal background, but earned his credibility as a competent lawyer and then as a principled political leader."

Why then does Rabbani fall for the VIP trappings? Surely, his life is not threatened the way Rehman Malik contends that his is? Malik has excused himself from appearing in person at courts because our security czar claims that there are people out to kill him.

I wrote on the chief secretary Punjab last week. He's on leave these days because the car that he was sitting in killed a man. The chief secretary's chauffeur is perhaps behind bars. But here is what he said against his boss according to a Lahore-based English newspaper report appearing on January 28. Permit me to reproduce it verbatim: "Ghulam Murtaza, the Punjab chief secretary's (CS) driver who was arrested on Tuesday for running over a retired colonel, has alleged that the CS had slapped him for not driving fast, shortly before the car hit and caused the death of Col (r) Muhammad Ikram, sources privy to the investigation told the daily. 'Most of the drivers left due to Javed Mahmood's unruly behaviour... the CS is known to use rough language and has sometimes even slapped drivers, telling them to drive faster,' sources in the Punjab Civil Secretariat said. They also claimed that in the past week, the CS had manhandled and humiliated Murtaza in front of the camp office staff over a minor oversight. On the day of the accident, the driver himself was under great psychological pressure, sources said. A number of drivers, who had worked for the CS, told the daily that Javed Mahmood had a habit of humiliating his drivers during out-of-station trips. Interestingly, Javed Mahmood has replaced around 15 staff drivers since his posting as the head of the province's civil administration in March 2008. According to the sources, Ghulam Murtaza has claimed that soon after the incident the CS got out of the car and walked away, directing him later on the phone not to disclose to anyone that he (Javed Mahmood) was in the car at the time of the accident."

If the damning testimony by the driver as reproduced above is baloney, the ex-chief secretary must set the record straight. It's most damaging. But more often than not, it's a reflection of how our bureaucrats treat their inferiors, especially servants, who dare not protest. The issue here is the cold hauteur of civil servants, trained to be rude, rough, boorish and harsh towards their servants and lower staff. Their wives and children too treat those who serve them with arrogance. It becomes a part of their DNA.

Pakistan is cursed with a VIP culture that will just not go away. There is no cure. From Zardari down to the thanedar or the patwari, we the ordinary citizens must accept these holy cows and be meek, submissive and servile before them. God forbid, should one come in their path, one is pushed aside like a speck of dust and told to remove himself/herself, even reprimanded and warned for polluting the stratified air the VIP breathes. 'Get lost' is the message!

Some even get killed! Like the colonel and the unlucky motorcyclist who happened to be on the same road as the senior adviser to the Punjab chief minister, Sardar Zulfiqar Khosa, driving from Derawar Fort after the conclusion of the Cholistan Jeep Rally. He was squished like a fly by the fleeting police escort 'guarding' Khosa. Two other riders survived the swat but are probably maimed for life.

Nothing short of a revolution will scorch this bumper crop of VIPs from our land."