But, before we blame Jon Stewart for the Mushy episode
Did Jon really have any choice in the matter?
Comedy Central is owned by Viacom, which also owns CBS and Simon & Schuster, you know, the publisher of Musharraf’s fictionalized account.
See a Pattern?
Friday, September 29, 2006
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Jon Stewart and Mush have tea
for the record - I (MsMitty) love the Daily Show
Jon Stewart Praises a Dictator
David Wallechinsky
It is bad enough that the Bush administration is buddy-buddy with Pakistan's dictator, General Pervez Musharraf, but now we have to deal someone respectable, Jon Stewart, acting the same way. On The Daily Show on September 26, Stewart told Musharraf, "You're doing a wonderful job." Really?
In my book, Tyrants: The World's 20 Worst Living Dictators, I include a chapter on Gen.
Musharraf.
Among the facts about him worth keeping in mind:
• Musharraf seized power in a military coup that overthrew an elected government.
• Before 9/11, Musharraf was the leading foreign supporter of the Taliban.
• He gave a full pardon to Abdul Qadeer Khan after it was revealed that Khan had shared nuclear technology with the dictatorships of North Korea, Iran and Libya.
• According to the U.S. State Department's most recent report on human rights practices in Pakistan, "The government's human rights record was poor, and serious problems remained. The following human rights problems were reported:
• restrictions on citizens' right to change their government
• extrajudicial killings, torture, and rape
• poor prison conditions, arbitrary arrest, and lengthy pretrial detention
• violations of due process and privacy rights
• lack of judicial independence
• harassment, intimidation, and arrest of journalists
• limits on freedom of association, religion, and movement
• imprisonment of political leaders
• corruption
• legal and societal discrimination against women
• child abuse
• trafficking in women and children, and child prostitution
• discrimination against persons with disabilities
• indentured, bonded, and child labor
• restriction of worker rights"
The U.S. State Department goes on to add, "Security force personnel continued to torture persons in custody throughout the country. Human rights organizations reported that methods included beating, burning with cigarettes, whipping the soles of the feet, prolonged isolation, electric shock, denial of food or sleep, hanging upside down, and forced spreading of the legs with bar fetters. Security force personnel reportedly raped women and children during interrogations. The nongovernmental organization (NGO) Lawyers for Human Rights and Legal Aid recorded 1,356 cases of torture during the year."
With all due respect to Jon Stewart, I hope that he will reconsider his claim that Musharraf is "doing a wonderful job."
__________________
Human Rights Watch asks Bush not to Turn Blind Eye on Torture, Discrimination Against Women
Jon Stewart Praises a Dictator
David Wallechinsky
It is bad enough that the Bush administration is buddy-buddy with Pakistan's dictator, General Pervez Musharraf, but now we have to deal someone respectable, Jon Stewart, acting the same way. On The Daily Show on September 26, Stewart told Musharraf, "You're doing a wonderful job." Really?
In my book, Tyrants: The World's 20 Worst Living Dictators, I include a chapter on Gen.
Musharraf.
Among the facts about him worth keeping in mind:
• Musharraf seized power in a military coup that overthrew an elected government.
• Before 9/11, Musharraf was the leading foreign supporter of the Taliban.
• He gave a full pardon to Abdul Qadeer Khan after it was revealed that Khan had shared nuclear technology with the dictatorships of North Korea, Iran and Libya.
• According to the U.S. State Department's most recent report on human rights practices in Pakistan, "The government's human rights record was poor, and serious problems remained. The following human rights problems were reported:
• restrictions on citizens' right to change their government
• extrajudicial killings, torture, and rape
• poor prison conditions, arbitrary arrest, and lengthy pretrial detention
• violations of due process and privacy rights
• lack of judicial independence
• harassment, intimidation, and arrest of journalists
• limits on freedom of association, religion, and movement
• imprisonment of political leaders
• corruption
• legal and societal discrimination against women
• child abuse
• trafficking in women and children, and child prostitution
• discrimination against persons with disabilities
• indentured, bonded, and child labor
• restriction of worker rights"
The U.S. State Department goes on to add, "Security force personnel continued to torture persons in custody throughout the country. Human rights organizations reported that methods included beating, burning with cigarettes, whipping the soles of the feet, prolonged isolation, electric shock, denial of food or sleep, hanging upside down, and forced spreading of the legs with bar fetters. Security force personnel reportedly raped women and children during interrogations. The nongovernmental organization (NGO) Lawyers for Human Rights and Legal Aid recorded 1,356 cases of torture during the year."
With all due respect to Jon Stewart, I hope that he will reconsider his claim that Musharraf is "doing a wonderful job."
__________________
Human Rights Watch asks Bush not to Turn Blind Eye on Torture, Discrimination Against Women
All the News Our Tiny Minds Can Manage
By Tom Engelhardt
Nation BLOG | Posted 09/26/2006 @ 08:00am
For a little thought experiment, go to the website of Newsweek's international edition. There, running down the left side of the page, are three covers, all the same, for the European, Asian, and Latin American editions of the October 2 issue.
Each has a dramatic shot of a Taliban fighter shouldering an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade). The cover headline is: "Losing Afghanistan," pointing to a devastating piece on our Afghan War by Ron Moreau, Sami Yousafzai, and Michael Hirsh, "The Rise of Jihadistan." which sports this subhead: "Five years after the Afghan invasion, the Taliban are fighting back hard, carving out a sanctuary where they--and Al Qaeda's leaders--can operate freely." The piece begins: "You don't have to drive very far from Kabul these days to find the Taliban." (In fact, the magazine's reporters found a gathering of 100 of them in a village just a two-hour drive south of the Afghan capital.)
Now, go back to the international edition and take another look. Scroll down the page to the cover which doesn't match the others. That's the one for Newsweek's US edition. No Taliban fighter. No RPG. Instead, a photo of an ash-blond woman with three young children dressed in white, one in her arms, and the headline: "My Life in Pictures." The woman turns out to be Annie Liebovitz, photographer of the stars, and the story by Cathleen McGuigan, "Through Her Lens," has this Taliban-free first line: "Annie Leibovitz is tired and nursing a cold, and she' s just flown back to New York on the red-eye from Los Angeles, where she spent two days shooting Angelina Jolie for Vogue."
"The Rise of Jihadism" is still inside, of course; now, a secondary story. After all, Angelina Jolie is ours, while a distant botch of a war in Afghanistan..? As the magazine's editors clearly concluded, while the rest of the world considers the return of the Taliban, let us eat cake.
.....a day later the Washington Post carries the same story.
NB: the Washington Post and Newsweek are commonly owned.
……meanwhile in England
Reid meets the furious face of Islam
By Philip Johnston,
Filed: 21/09/2006
John Reid, the Home Secretary, came face to face with the intolerance of militant Islam yesterday as he urged Muslim parents to stand up to the extremists and keep their children from being "groomed" to be suicide bombers.
During a speech in east London he was shouted down by Abu Izzadeen, a well-known fundamentalist who has been linked to a now banned organisation and who praised the ''martyrdom" of suicide bombers after the July 7 attacks in London last year.
The speech had been trailed by the Home Office and protesters were waiting at a youth centre in Leytonstone waving placards with the slogans ''John Reid go to Hell" and ''John Reid you will pay".
Mr Izzadeen, dressed in a long white robe and turban, told Mr Reid: "How dare you come to a Muslim area when you have arrested so many Muslims in this area?
"I am furious. I am absolutely furious — John Reid should not come to a Muslim area. We do not want to see him. Shame on all of us for sitting down and listening to him."
He shouted: "John Reid, Tony Blair and George Bush's crusade can all go to Hell."
The outburst lasted about five minutes before the heavily built Mr Izzadeen, 30, was ushered out of the building to continue his demonstration in the street.
Mr Reid was addressing a small group of Muslims about the dangers of fundamentalism, while praising the commitment of the majority to the ''shared values" of equality and justice.
It was as he was listing the Muslim countries that had been attacked by terrorists that Mr Izzadeen started to berate him. A woman who tried to intervene was told to shut up.
Mr Reid said he was used to being heckled but was angered by the suggestion that he should not be in "a Muslim area". He said there were no places in Britain where a home secretary could not go.
''We must never allow ourselves to be intimidated or shouted down," he said. "There will always be people who are not prepared to take part in a dialogue… They are not confined to the Muslim community."
In his first speech to a Muslim audience since he became Home Secretary, Mr Reid sought to join Cabinet colleagues in "a hearts and minds" assault aimed at separating the mainstream Muslims from the extremists.
He dismissed the idea of "a clash of civilisations" between the West and Islam, a debate that has been renewed since Pope Benedict's comments last week.
Mr Reid said the perception of Islam had been hijacked by activists who used religion to cloak their militancy. He said they were not Muslims "in the true sense of the word" but were waging a violent and indiscriminate war.
The communities that harboured them should be more aware of their presence and be prepared to stand up to them, although he knew that was not easy.
Mr Reid was especially anxious to send a message to Muslim parents about the dangers posed by extremists.
"These fanatics are looking to groom and brainwash children, including your children, for suicide bombings," he said. "Grooming them to kill themselves to murder others.
"Look for the tell-tale signs now and talk to them before their hatred grows and you risk losing them for ever."
Mr Reid was then interrupted by Anjem Choudary, a leading Islamic militant, who held up a placard and shouted: "Enemy of Islam and the Muslims."
Mr Choudary said later that he objected to the insinuation that Muslim children might be brainwashed.
"Muslims do not need British values," he said. ''We believe that Islam is superior; we believe Islam will be implemented one day.
"It is very rich for you to come here and say we need to monitor our children when your Government is murdering people in Iraq and Afghanistan." Residents were also unconvinced by the message. Shankat Khan, 55, said that Mr Reid should not single out Muslims. "What about the British parents?" he asked. "We are as worried as other parents but we need to be part of a wider society."
[..]
______________________
Dialogue?
Abu Izzadeen is not interested in the dialogue that the heckle by its very nature is supposed to encourage. He simply wants to shut down free speech. A rabble-rouser, he has praised the "courage" of the July 7 bombers, described their victims as "animals" and "cowards", and said that Christians and Jews are bound for "hell-fire".
Just the sort of man, you would have thought, who should be dealt with under the 2006 Terrorism Act, which makes it an offence to say anything which "glorifies the commission or preparation" of acts of terrorism. Fat chance. There has not been a single prosecution under this legislation, so pusillanimous are the authorities when dealing with Muslim fanaticism.
Yet while Abu Izzadeen is free to preach his loathsome message, he reacts like a scalded cat when the Home Secretary delivers an uncompromising message to the Muslim community. [.]
Regrettably, Abu Izzadeen's objection to Mr Reid's "lecturing" Muslims is shared by many in the wider Muslim community who argue that they are being unfairly targeted. It is easy to appreciate their frustrations but the sad truth is that it was Muslim fanatics – not Christian or Jewish or Hindu – who murdered 52 people last July, and the notion that this reality cannot be recognised for fear of offending Muslim sensibilities is dangerous.
By Philip Johnston,
Filed: 21/09/2006
John Reid, the Home Secretary, came face to face with the intolerance of militant Islam yesterday as he urged Muslim parents to stand up to the extremists and keep their children from being "groomed" to be suicide bombers.
During a speech in east London he was shouted down by Abu Izzadeen, a well-known fundamentalist who has been linked to a now banned organisation and who praised the ''martyrdom" of suicide bombers after the July 7 attacks in London last year.
The speech had been trailed by the Home Office and protesters were waiting at a youth centre in Leytonstone waving placards with the slogans ''John Reid go to Hell" and ''John Reid you will pay".
Mr Izzadeen, dressed in a long white robe and turban, told Mr Reid: "How dare you come to a Muslim area when you have arrested so many Muslims in this area?
"I am furious. I am absolutely furious — John Reid should not come to a Muslim area. We do not want to see him. Shame on all of us for sitting down and listening to him."
He shouted: "John Reid, Tony Blair and George Bush's crusade can all go to Hell."
The outburst lasted about five minutes before the heavily built Mr Izzadeen, 30, was ushered out of the building to continue his demonstration in the street.
Mr Reid was addressing a small group of Muslims about the dangers of fundamentalism, while praising the commitment of the majority to the ''shared values" of equality and justice.
It was as he was listing the Muslim countries that had been attacked by terrorists that Mr Izzadeen started to berate him. A woman who tried to intervene was told to shut up.
Mr Reid said he was used to being heckled but was angered by the suggestion that he should not be in "a Muslim area". He said there were no places in Britain where a home secretary could not go.
''We must never allow ourselves to be intimidated or shouted down," he said. "There will always be people who are not prepared to take part in a dialogue… They are not confined to the Muslim community."
In his first speech to a Muslim audience since he became Home Secretary, Mr Reid sought to join Cabinet colleagues in "a hearts and minds" assault aimed at separating the mainstream Muslims from the extremists.
He dismissed the idea of "a clash of civilisations" between the West and Islam, a debate that has been renewed since Pope Benedict's comments last week.
Mr Reid said the perception of Islam had been hijacked by activists who used religion to cloak their militancy. He said they were not Muslims "in the true sense of the word" but were waging a violent and indiscriminate war.
The communities that harboured them should be more aware of their presence and be prepared to stand up to them, although he knew that was not easy.
Mr Reid was especially anxious to send a message to Muslim parents about the dangers posed by extremists.
"These fanatics are looking to groom and brainwash children, including your children, for suicide bombings," he said. "Grooming them to kill themselves to murder others.
"Look for the tell-tale signs now and talk to them before their hatred grows and you risk losing them for ever."
Mr Reid was then interrupted by Anjem Choudary, a leading Islamic militant, who held up a placard and shouted: "Enemy of Islam and the Muslims."
Mr Choudary said later that he objected to the insinuation that Muslim children might be brainwashed.
"Muslims do not need British values," he said. ''We believe that Islam is superior; we believe Islam will be implemented one day.
"It is very rich for you to come here and say we need to monitor our children when your Government is murdering people in Iraq and Afghanistan." Residents were also unconvinced by the message. Shankat Khan, 55, said that Mr Reid should not single out Muslims. "What about the British parents?" he asked. "We are as worried as other parents but we need to be part of a wider society."
[..]
______________________
Dialogue?
Abu Izzadeen is not interested in the dialogue that the heckle by its very nature is supposed to encourage. He simply wants to shut down free speech. A rabble-rouser, he has praised the "courage" of the July 7 bombers, described their victims as "animals" and "cowards", and said that Christians and Jews are bound for "hell-fire".
Just the sort of man, you would have thought, who should be dealt with under the 2006 Terrorism Act, which makes it an offence to say anything which "glorifies the commission or preparation" of acts of terrorism. Fat chance. There has not been a single prosecution under this legislation, so pusillanimous are the authorities when dealing with Muslim fanaticism.
Yet while Abu Izzadeen is free to preach his loathsome message, he reacts like a scalded cat when the Home Secretary delivers an uncompromising message to the Muslim community. [.]
Regrettably, Abu Izzadeen's objection to Mr Reid's "lecturing" Muslims is shared by many in the wider Muslim community who argue that they are being unfairly targeted. It is easy to appreciate their frustrations but the sad truth is that it was Muslim fanatics – not Christian or Jewish or Hindu – who murdered 52 people last July, and the notion that this reality cannot be recognised for fear of offending Muslim sensibilities is dangerous.
Pre-emptive surrender
So the Pope apologizes, Germany cancels a Mozart Opera… who’s winning the war on terrorism?
At least some in Germany don’t think censorship a good idea.
Spiegel calls it a “ shocking example of pre-emptive surrender: At this point, it seems, terrorists don't even need to issue a specific threat in order to intimidate us.”
---------------------
Rushdie, Hirsi Ali, the Pope -- Who's Next?
SPIEGEL ONLINE - September 18, 2006, 03:34 PM
By Claus Christian Malzahn in Berlin
The pope has apologized for the outrage amongst Muslims sparked by his recent comments. But the episode proves once again that criticizing Islam is dangerous.
Twenty years ago in the German city of Bremen, Dutch comedian Rudi Carrell's life depended on police protection. His offense? In a satirical program on German television, he let fly with a lewd joke about the then leader of the Iranian revolution Ayatollah Khomeini. Mass demonstrations in Iran -- orchestrated, no doubt, by the government -- were the result. The threats of violence led to an apology by Carrell, and he never again made a joke about any Muslim -- at least not on television.
In February 1989, the Ayatollah then released a fatwa calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie for his novel "The Satanic Verses." The book, he and other Muslim leaders claimed, was a grave misrepresentation of Islam. Rushdie's Japanese translator lost his life as a result of the fatwa and Rushdie himself went into hiding, though the Iranian leadership distanced itself from the fatwa in 1998. There remain, however, a number of fanatical Muslims who yearn to see Rushdie dead.
Feminist and Islam critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the former Dutch parliamentarian who recently left Holland, also lives under threat of murder. In addition to a number of interesting books about the oppression faced by women in the Muslim world, she also wrote the screenplay for the short film "Submission." In one scene, a verse from the Koran -- demanding that women bend to the will of their husbands -- is projected onto a woman's naked body. The film was provocative, and the filmmaker Theo van Gogh paid for it with his life. He was killed on the streets of Amsterdam by a Muslim fanatic.
And then there's Flemming Rose, the Danish editor who a year ago published a series of Muhammad caricatures in his newspaper. Months after they originally appeared, the Muslim world erupted in protest against the drawings. He too must fear for his life.
One thing should be kept in mind, however: The often violent protests that erupted in the Muslim world in the wake of the cartoon controversy have often been manipulated and fuelled by Islamists. The bile currently being flung at the pope is no different.
But the attacks against the pope are especially grotesque. The severe criticism -- often coupled with threats of violence -- directed at the speech held last Tuesday by Benedict XVI is not just an attack on the head of the Catholic Church. The malicious twisting of the pope's words and the absurd allegations made by representatives of Islam represent a frontal attack on open religious and philosophical dialogue.
That so many in the Muslim world joined the protests against the pope merely show just how influential Islamist extremist groups have become. The political goal of the Islamists is clear: any dispute between Christianity and Islam must obey the rules handed down by political Islamism.
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Bending to this demand would be a mistake -- indeed it would be tantamount to turning one's back on freedom of expression and opinion. What will come next? Perhaps a complaint that Allah feels insulted by the numerous European women who don bikinis during a summer trip to the beach. It could be anything really -- militant Islamists will always find something. But the response needs to be firm. Freedom of speech, after all, is a vital value and needs to be defended. Any attempt to make political speech hostage to some imagined will of God must be resisted.
There are -- few -- critical voices that should be taken seriously when it comes to the pope's comments. Shouldn't Benedict XVI have known that the quote he included in his speech -- a passage he himself described as "brusque" -- might be misunderstood? Couldn't he have made his meaning a bit clearer? Even if he had, it should be welcomed by all, including leftist atheists and agnostics, that we now have a pope who can pose challenging academic questions. In any case, a close reading of his speech reveals not a single insult directed at a single Muslim.
And there's no reason to respond to every presumed insult. Consider an example from Denmark. Recently, a paper there published a number of rather tasteless Holocaust cartoons which had been shown in Tehran. The reaction of Copenhagen's rabbi was instructive when considered against the bloody response to the Muhammad cartoons -- outrage which ended up costing lives. When asked if he would call for protests, the rabbi merely said: "You know, I've seen worse."
--------------------------------------------------------------------
At least some in Germany don’t think censorship a good idea.
Spiegel calls it a “ shocking example of pre-emptive surrender: At this point, it seems, terrorists don't even need to issue a specific threat in order to intimidate us.”
---------------------
Rushdie, Hirsi Ali, the Pope -- Who's Next?
SPIEGEL ONLINE - September 18, 2006, 03:34 PM
By Claus Christian Malzahn in Berlin
The pope has apologized for the outrage amongst Muslims sparked by his recent comments. But the episode proves once again that criticizing Islam is dangerous.
Twenty years ago in the German city of Bremen, Dutch comedian Rudi Carrell's life depended on police protection. His offense? In a satirical program on German television, he let fly with a lewd joke about the then leader of the Iranian revolution Ayatollah Khomeini. Mass demonstrations in Iran -- orchestrated, no doubt, by the government -- were the result. The threats of violence led to an apology by Carrell, and he never again made a joke about any Muslim -- at least not on television.
In February 1989, the Ayatollah then released a fatwa calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie for his novel "The Satanic Verses." The book, he and other Muslim leaders claimed, was a grave misrepresentation of Islam. Rushdie's Japanese translator lost his life as a result of the fatwa and Rushdie himself went into hiding, though the Iranian leadership distanced itself from the fatwa in 1998. There remain, however, a number of fanatical Muslims who yearn to see Rushdie dead.
Feminist and Islam critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the former Dutch parliamentarian who recently left Holland, also lives under threat of murder. In addition to a number of interesting books about the oppression faced by women in the Muslim world, she also wrote the screenplay for the short film "Submission." In one scene, a verse from the Koran -- demanding that women bend to the will of their husbands -- is projected onto a woman's naked body. The film was provocative, and the filmmaker Theo van Gogh paid for it with his life. He was killed on the streets of Amsterdam by a Muslim fanatic.
And then there's Flemming Rose, the Danish editor who a year ago published a series of Muhammad caricatures in his newspaper. Months after they originally appeared, the Muslim world erupted in protest against the drawings. He too must fear for his life.
One thing should be kept in mind, however: The often violent protests that erupted in the Muslim world in the wake of the cartoon controversy have often been manipulated and fuelled by Islamists. The bile currently being flung at the pope is no different.
But the attacks against the pope are especially grotesque. The severe criticism -- often coupled with threats of violence -- directed at the speech held last Tuesday by Benedict XVI is not just an attack on the head of the Catholic Church. The malicious twisting of the pope's words and the absurd allegations made by representatives of Islam represent a frontal attack on open religious and philosophical dialogue.
That so many in the Muslim world joined the protests against the pope merely show just how influential Islamist extremist groups have become. The political goal of the Islamists is clear: any dispute between Christianity and Islam must obey the rules handed down by political Islamism.
NEWSLETTER
Sign up for Spiegel Online's daily newsletter and get the best of Der Spiegel's and Spiegel Online's international coverage in your In- Box everyday.
Bending to this demand would be a mistake -- indeed it would be tantamount to turning one's back on freedom of expression and opinion. What will come next? Perhaps a complaint that Allah feels insulted by the numerous European women who don bikinis during a summer trip to the beach. It could be anything really -- militant Islamists will always find something. But the response needs to be firm. Freedom of speech, after all, is a vital value and needs to be defended. Any attempt to make political speech hostage to some imagined will of God must be resisted.
There are -- few -- critical voices that should be taken seriously when it comes to the pope's comments. Shouldn't Benedict XVI have known that the quote he included in his speech -- a passage he himself described as "brusque" -- might be misunderstood? Couldn't he have made his meaning a bit clearer? Even if he had, it should be welcomed by all, including leftist atheists and agnostics, that we now have a pope who can pose challenging academic questions. In any case, a close reading of his speech reveals not a single insult directed at a single Muslim.
And there's no reason to respond to every presumed insult. Consider an example from Denmark. Recently, a paper there published a number of rather tasteless Holocaust cartoons which had been shown in Tehran. The reaction of Copenhagen's rabbi was instructive when considered against the bloody response to the Muhammad cartoons -- outrage which ended up costing lives. When asked if he would call for protests, the rabbi merely said: "You know, I've seen worse."
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Reactions to Musharraf'sbook
Heights of deception
K. Subrahmanyam
Posted online: Wednesday, September 27, 2006 at 0000 hrs IST
It has taken seven years after the event for General Pervez Musharraf to come out with his version of the Kargil war. What an imaginative version! He tells us now that it was a great victory. It helped to internationalise the Kashmir issue. It was undertaken because the Indian side was preparing an offensive operation. He expects the Pakistanis and the rest of the world to accept this version after dozens of books have been written on the war, an overwhelming number of which give a very different version of the event. The general either has very great confidence in his persuasive powers or harbours utter contempt for the people of Pakistan, who are the primary audience of this book.
If India was preparing for an offensive action and this move was undertaken as a countermeasure, why was this charge not made earlier when the then Pakistani foreign minister, Sartaj Aziz, visited India in June 1999? Why did it not feature in the conversations of the director-generals of military operations? Why did not Prime Minster Nawaz Sharif raise the issue in his conversations with Atal Bihari Vajpayee? The general claims it was a great victory for his army. Why then is it that the officers and men of the Pakistan army who fought valiantly and got killed did not get the decent burial that was their due? Why were their bodies abandoned on Indian territory? There is no precedent in the history of warfare of a victorious army behaving this way. Why did Pakistan not own up to this victory? Why was it not advertised to the great pride of the Pakistani people till this book was published?
If Pakistan’s action was a preventive or preemptive action against a planned Indian offensive, there should have been no difficulty in it owning up to the presence of its Northern Light infantrymen across the LoC. But the myth of “mujahideen” was maintained even at the time of withdrawal. There was no need for Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz to cover himself with ridicule by claiming that the LoC was not clear, with the Indian side throwing at him the demarcation maps signed by General Hamid of Pakistan and General Bhagat of India.
Musharraf is economical with the truth when he claims that he told Nawaz Sharif, as he was leaving for Washington on July 3, 1999, that the military situation was favourable to Pakistan. Tololing was recaptured on June 17, Point 5149 in the Dras section on June 20, and Tiger Hill in the Dras sector was retaken even as Sharif was flying to Washington. Presumably the Americans did not share the general’s assessment of the military situation being favourable.
According to Bruce Riedel’s account, the Pakistani army was attempting to escalate the conflict while being pushed back, by attempting to deploy presumably nuclear missiles, as the Americans assessed. General Musharraf denies this and says that at that stage the Pakistani nuclear arsenal was not in a position to be deployed. He may well be right on that point.
However, the Americans with their satellite information were not confirming General Musharraf’s assessment to Prime Minister Sharif on the night of July 3, 1999 that the military situation was favourable to Pakistan.
General Musharraf claims Kargil as a great diplomatic success since it internationalised Kashmir. In fact, it was the first time India found that neither China nor the United States was prepared to back Pakistan on its misadventure and in a sense Kargil marked a turning point in Indo-US relations. President Clinton’s firm stand that there was no point in Sharif coming to Washington unless he was prepared to withdraw his forces impressed India favourably. Subsequently, in March 2000, on General Musharraf’s watch, Clinton said in his TV address to the entire Pakistani nation that borders could not be redrawn in blood. Evidently these developments count as favourable ones from General Musharraf’s point of view. No need for India to quarrel with him on this issue.
General Musharraf confirms the conclusion of the Kargil Committee report that the balance of probability suggested that Nawaz Sharif was fully in the picture. This, it may be recalled, was against the wisdom of the then top Indian political leadership who maintained that Sharif, who had signed the Lahore Declaration, could not have approved the Kargil aggression. While the general may not necessarily be truthful on all points in recounting the Kargil misadventure, it is clear that Sharif too has not been telling the truth on Kargil.
Obviously the book is a kind of election manifesto for the general to stand for election as president next year. Among the previous military rulers of Pakistan, President Ayub Khan and President Yahya Khan did not survive defeats in the military adventures they launched. In this case, the war was launched by Sharif, no doubt instigated by General Musharraf. Sharif has paid the penalty for launching the Kargil war.
General Musharraf is trying to salvage his position after having survived the aftermath of the Kargil debacle for seven years. His version of events is not likely to impress political leaders, analysts or military establishments around the globe. On the issue of Kargil, the audience he is aiming at is Pakistani servicemen and common people. Presumably he relies on public memory being proverbially short. Still he has taken high risks of being challenged in his own country. India has to deal with General Musharraf as a ruler of neighbouring Pakistan. There is no alternative to that. In doing that we have to bear in mind the mindset of the leader we are dealing with. In this case, he seems to be a person who is not highly concerned about his own credibility.
The writer was chairman of the Kargil Review Committee set up by the Government of India in 1999
___________________________
Hogwash: Brajesh, Gen MalikAdd to Clippings
Rajat Pandit
[ 26 Sep, 2006 0034hrs ISTTIMES NEWS NETWORK ]
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NEW DELHI: Having served with Pakistan's elite Special Service Group as a commando, General Pervez Musharraf knows the importance of psychological operations.
But this time, he's clearly overreached by trying to pin the blame on India for the 1999 Kargil conflict. In his book, In the Line of Fire: A Memoir, Musharraf claims aggressive moves by Indian Army along the contentious LoC in 1998 forced Pakistan to reinforce its forward positions in the Kargil region, which eventually led to the conflict.
Plain hogwash by a person used to peddling lies, say the then national security advisor Brajesh Mishra and the then Army chief General V P Malik.
"I have read the chapter on Kargil in Musharraf's book...There are a lot of untruths in it. The book will further expose Musharraf as someone who cannot be believed," General Malik told TOI on Monday.
"Musharraf is trying to whitewash all the harm he did to Pakistan's polity and international standing by undertaking the Kargil misadventure. In the book, he tries to shift all the blame for the ceasefire and subsequent withdrawal of Pakistani forces from Kargil to Nawaz Sharif," he added.
Brajesh Mishra dismissed as a "bundle of lies" Musharraf's description of the Kargil conflict as a "landmark in the history of Pakistani Army" and said: "India did not cross the Line of Control... Pakistan Army did and it was defeated."
Mishra said: "According to estimates, Pak Army lost between 1,000 and 2,000 personnel."
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'Musharraf's book harming Pak'
Wednesday, September 27, 2006 09:05:41 am
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IN THE LINE OF FIRE: President Musharraf’s book has not been well received by senior bureaucrats in Pakistan
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf' is very much the man of the moment - courting controversy as pre release hype for his memoir 'In the line of Fire', which is up best seller lists a day after its release.
However, in Pakistan, people have not taken to his supposed revelations too kindly. Some even questioning his right to publish the memoir saying it may have breached the oath of office.
‘Musharraf has no achievement to his credit’
"I think he wrote this book at a time when he is thoroughly discredited; he has really no achievement to his credit," Roedad Khan, a former senior bureaucrat and analyst, told Reuters on Tuesday (September 26).
General Musharraf, who has controversially retained his role as army chief, has had to walk a tightrope since forging an alliance with the United States after Sept 11, 2001, as the majority of Pakistanis disagree strongly with US foreign policy.
But for foreign readers, Musharraf's chapters dealing with the war on terrorism could generate a sense of relief that the general is still at the helm. "He (Musharraf) is telling the West: "You have kept me there, you know, if you want to win the war on terror. And you have to allow me to keep my uniform, you know, as Chief of Army Staff if you want me to win this war,"' Khan said, adding, "These are the arguments he is using, and I think he is succeeding."
The Pakistani president claimed he wrote the book as he wanted the world to understand Pakistan better, but his own people don't seem to be buying his claim.
Analysts in Pakistan are also worried about the president writing about security issues and relations with other countries.
‘Musharraf the only one benefited’
Lieutenant-General Asad Durrani, Former Chief Of Pakistan's Top Spy Agency, ISI, says, "I've thought a great deal about it. Does it (Musharraf's Book) help Pakistan, its image or its policies, its relations with anyone at all? And I still have to find a positive answer."
Durrani further adds, "When we talk about Kargil of course we will end up annoying very many people in India, which may have been alright if we had actually talked about Kargil in a manner in which we generally have known it. But trying to defend Kargil was not going to be helpful."
"All that I can conclude is the book only helps one man and that is Pervez Musharraf," says Durrani.
But as the controversies pile up so do the book sales. It’s already No. 7 on the Amazon.com bestseller list. Booksellers both in Islamabad and in the West say despite the high retail cost of the book, people were still buying it, boosting the capital's flagging book business.
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Now for some ghazals too
September 26, 2006
Hindustan Times (India)
It is standard practice for leading public figures to write their memoirs after they have reached the climax of their careers. They either unveil themselves and the goings-on during their time after they have stepped down from office (the memoirs of Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, Jaswant Singh, etc.), or their writings steer clear from their day job (Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s poems, Abdul Kalam’s soul-stirrers, etc). The author of In The Line of Fire does away with such niceties and, á la Hillary Clinton, Nicolas Sarkozy et al, writes a campaign manifesto-as-memoir. The President of Pakistan presents a dictatorial perspective of his handling of the ongoing war on terror, the ‘real’ reason behind the 1999 “counter-coup”, the shenanigans within Pakistani polity and the ‘personal bits’ with which he wants us to know that the dictator can become a cuddly elected President in 2007.
But the real bits that jump out and are the USP of the book are Pervez Musharraf’s observations involving India. He insists that it was India, not Pakistan, that started the Kargil conflict, which in turn led to “the initiative” being “wrested from India” and creating an imbalance in the “Indian system of forces”. Never mind the propaganda or empirical evidence, the General insists that India lost the war it had started. Strangely, though, he writes in the last line of the chapter: “... whatever movement has taken place so far in the direction of finding a solution to Kashmir is due considerably to the Kargil conflict.” Does this mean that he is giving India credit for leading the way via Kargil to an India-Pakistan peace process? Even the most rumbustious hawk in New Delhi will feel embarrassed to take such credit. Mr Musharraf also writes about a Dubai-based cartel that provided Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan-led nuclear programme with the wherewithals. A confession that is late is better than no confession. But to get to the bottom of his claim that India’s uranium enrichment programme could have come from the same network requires another set of memoirs — perhaps those of Dr Khan.
All this ‘remembrance of things past’ has already upset many in India. It is too early to tell whether J.K. Rowling is worried about competition. But Mr Musharraf is the man with whom Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will be talking about India-Pakistan ties. This is a serious issue that requires both tact and facts — not the subject of a future foray into a new sub-genre of fantasy fiction. For Mr Singh to find himself as the subject of Mr Musharraf’s next presidential memoir — as Richard Armitage finds himself in this one — could make him rethink opening his mouth. History is supposedly written by the victor. But history as presented by a fabulist in a memoir can be an effective spanner in the works. Forget Indian diplomats. Would you invite Mr Musharraf, the latest magic realist from the subcontinent, to dinner?
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Will Musharraf's book reopen old wounds?
By Shahzeb Jillani
BBC News, Washington
Not surprisingly, Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf's memoirs has generated a strong reaction.
Now he must respond to some of the strongest criticism and denials about his sensational claims made in In The Line of Fire.
In an interview with an American TV network before the book launch, Gen Musharraf said that the US had threatened to bomb Pakistan "back to the Stone Age" if it did not cooperate in the war on terror.
In a joint press briefing after meeting President Bush at the White House on Friday, he refused to clarify the comments saying "he was honour-bound" to the publishers not to discuss the book before the launch.
For his part, President Bush said he is not aware of his country making such a threat to Pakistan.
Startling claims
Moreover, Richard Armitage, the former US official Gen Musharraf names as having delivered the threat to his intelligence chief, has denied the remarks attributed to him.
Mr Armitage, however, admits that soon after 9/11 he did deliver "a strong message" to the Pakistanis that either they were with the US or against it in the US-led war on terror.
In his book, Gen Musharraf has also made some startling claims about the 1999 Kargil conflict with India.
He lauds Pakistan army's "landmark" performance during the Kargil conflict and claims that it was the Indian army which wanted to capture Pakistani territory in 1999 that finally led to the Kargil war.
For many Indians, Kargil is a painful episode of betrayal and military adventure by Pakistan.
No wonder then, that President Musharraf's latest claims have drawn bitter reaction from Indian politicians and the media.
"All that he is saying is a pack of lies. He attacked us and then lost. That's the reality," is how India's former national security advisor, Brajesh Mishra, sums up the popular Indian sentiment.
The renewed controversy over what led to the Kargil conflict and who was responsible for it comes at a time when nearly more than a week ago the two countries decided to resume the suspended peace talks.
During the recent meeting in Havana, Gen Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pledged to work together to resolve all their disputes, including Kashmir.
'Trust deficit'
For the first time, they also decided to set up a joint mechanism to fight terrorism, something Mr Singh's government is still facing a lot of criticism for from the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
According to Indian officials, in Havana, the two sides made significant progress in improving the "trust deficit" between the two South Asian rivals.
Now, analysts worry that Gen Musharraf's candid views about the Kargil conflict threaten to reopen old wounds and spoil the prevailing positive mood for dialogue between the two nations.
In Pakistan, Gen Musharraf's critics have taken strong exception to the way he is seen to be promoting his book during his official US visit.
The opposition has accused him as a self promoting military ruler seeking to make a fortune in the name of Pakistan.
But, say his supporters, like him or not, through his controversial disclosures, he has managed to sell the book as a must read on contemporary Pakistan.
Meanwhile, In The Line Of Fire, out at the book stands in the US and Pakistan since early Monday morning, is said to be selling fairly well.
The book ranked 17th and 18th on online book retailer Amazon.com and Barnes & Nobles best sellers list respectively just before its launch. Within hours, it jumped to 14th on Amazon list and 12th on Barnes & Nobles site.
Given the controversies it seems to have triggered, the book is expected to climb further on the best sellers list.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/5380350.stm
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The coming conflict with Pakistan
Indrajeet Rai
India Post Spetember 25, 2006
Is Pervez Musharraf on his way out? Though none can predict his fate with certitude, he is facing the most serious crisis and there are signs suggesting his likely departure. If he finally departs, or just manages to survive, what are the implications for India?
The killing of Akbar Khan Bugti by the Pakistan army "sent a clear message to Musharraf that his era is over", said the Khan of Kalat-Mir Suleman Dawood, a descendant of Balochistan's earlier rulers. Bugti's killing was reportedly against the wishes of the President.
Some forces within the Pakistan army, which do not wish the continuation of the Musharraf regime, had effected the killing to create trouble and embarrass him. Rumors of a possible coup against him have been going round for some time.
An indication, apart from Bugti's killing against the General's dictates, indicative of broad disaffection with Musharraf's rule, is a letter written on July 18 by a group of retired military and government officials, calling for the military's disengagement from political power and asking Musharraf to either resign as the Chief of the Army Staff or as the President.
An opinion poll conducted by the International Republic Institute of the US which was published in the Dawn, found that 48 percent were of the opinion that Musharraf should not hold two offices simultaneously.
What was more interesting in the poll was a desire for the return of democracy in the Pakistani populace with two-thirds voting for the return of the exiled Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif to the country and taking part in the coming elections.
Boxed in by these developments, Musharraf has two options to survive: either co-opt the Right, which will compromise his continuing to support the war on terror, or extract support from the moderates that will ask him to relinquish one of his posts and let democracy be re-ushered into the country.
It seems Musharraf has decided to lean towards the Right. As a first step to please them, Pakistan has signed a peace deal with the Taliban. According to this peace deal, signed by Dr Fakr-I-Alam on behalf of Pakistan, and seven militants on behalf of the Taliban Shura (Advisory Council), Pakistani forces and local mujahideen and ulemas will stop attacking each other.
It seems Pakistan has also promised not to arrest Osama bin Laden. As reported by ABC News, "Pakistani officials told ABC News that bin Laden would be spared from being arrested if the dreaded terrorist decides to lead a peaceful life."
The troops freed as a result of the Pakistan-Taliban agreement may be used for two purposes: Either to contain the unrest in the Balochistan or undertake a Kargil type adventure against India.
The latter strategy is in the pipeline, if media reports are believed. According to India's military intelligence, the movement of 19 division and some brigades is threatening Indian positions in Gulmarg and Poonch.
A Kargil-type adventure is not a certainty, but is a possibility. India cannot ignore the repercussions of the troop movements and the Pakistan-Taliban peace deal.
Musharraf is finding the going very difficult. He needs to do something urgently to reassert his hold on power. Nothing would suit him more than a skirmish with India.
He is not a man given to irrational decisions, however, given a chance he would like to tread a safer route to ensure his survival. The meeting between him and the Indian Prime Minister on the sidelines of the NAM summit in Havana was a chance for India and Pakistan to reach some kind of deal on Kashmir.
There was no new assurance from Musharraf on restraining cross-border terror, though the joint statement recalled commitments made in previous documents from 2004 to 2005.
On Jammu and Kashmir, the joint statement said the two leaders had useful discussions and there was a 'need to build on convergences and narrow down divergences'. If the General is not able to satisfy his home constituency on progress on Kashmir issue, adventurism could become his main escape route.
For India, this is the time to strive for a democratic Pakistan. For too long India has debated the trade-offs between dealing with a dictator-a one point reference like the King of Nepal and democratically elected rulers. Experience suggests that a democratic neighborhood is better suited to India's long term interests.
The Alliance for Restoration of Democracy, formed by political rivals Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, has started gaining ground in the Pakistan. Its high time India attempted to strengthen democracy in Pakistan, notwithstanding its principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of its neighbors.
To strengthen democracy in Pakistan, India might take a clue from American democracy promotion efforts. America has allocated specific funds to promote democracy in Iran by training opposition leaders and trying to bring a regime change there.
It has been interpreted as interference in internal affairs of Iran by some, but promoting democracy has more or less come to be accepted as a universal norm in the liberal world.
Besides, India needs to raise the issue of democracy and the coming elections in Pakistan in every international forum be it the United Nations General Assembly or the Commonwealth. A democratic Pakistan is in the interests of India and South Asia and the entire world.
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Indian wounds reopened by Musharraf's memoirs
By Y.P. Rajesh (yes guess who's not writing this article our lovely Pam)
Reuters
Tuesday, September 26, 2006; 6:12 AM
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The memoirs of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf have reopened old wounds in neighboring India and reinforced perceptions of the military ruler as a man who cannot be trusted.
Officials declined to comment immediately on the memoirs, published on Monday, but privately bridled at his criticism of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's sincerity and flexibility in pursuing the peace process between the neighbors.
They said the timing of the comments, written in June but published barely a week after Singh and Musharraf held a friendly meeting in Cuba, was unfortunate.
Analysts were also damning on Tuesday in their assessment of "In the Line of Fire."
"The book is full of chest-thumping machismo and self-aggrandizement," said Chidanand Rajghatta, the Washington-based foreign editor of the Times of India newspaper.
"Musharraf seems unrepentant about most things that matter in India, be it Kargil, terrorism or infiltration."
India accuses Pakistan of arming and training militants and sending them across the border to fight New Delhi's rule in disputed Kashmir.
The scars of a 1999 conflict in the northern Kashmir region of Kargil also still run deep in India, which blames Musharraf for pushing in separatist militants backed by Pakistani troops to seize mountain heights in an act of unprovoked aggression.
In his book, Musharraf described the operation as a military success for Pakistan, admitted for the first time that Pakistani troops were involved but maintained they did not cross a military ceasefire line.
Raking up the conflict again seven years later has only reopened old wounds.
Jaswant Singh, foreign minister in India's previous Hindu nationalist-led government at the time of Kargil, called Musharraf's version of events "incredible."
"Quite often, when you occupy high office, the distinction between fiction and fact, gets obliterated. This is fictional," Singh told the Times Now news channel.
"UNREPENTANT MILITARY ADVENTURISM"
"In the Line of Fire" was due to be available across India on Tuesday and book stores in New Delhi said they had been flooded by enquiries. But excerpts have been widely published.
Musharraf said the United States had threatened to bomb Pakistan if it did not support its war on terror but also boasted of the money which his army had earned in rewards for handing over senior members of al Qaeda.
"It seems the whole thing about being an ally in the war on terror and his peace moves is more out of convenience than conviction," Rajghatta said, adding that the book as a whole raised serious questions about Pakistan's leader.
"It reeks of unrepentant military adventurism and Washington, New Delhi and Kabul have to note that."
An Indian atomic energy official said the Pakistani president's claim that India's uranium enrichment program could be based on a Pakistani centrifuge design was laughable.
In a tongue-in-cheek editorial, the Indian Express newspaper said Musharraf could not be accused of being short on words.
"Now that the general has been there, done that ... it's the perfect time for him to head back home and turn his attention to things somewhat more substantial," it said.
"Like actually cracking down on the jehadi camps in his backyard. It could make a great bestseller some day."
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Musharraf's book infuriates India
Bruce Loudon, South Asia correspondent
September 27, 2006
HOPES for an improvement in relations between New Delhi and Islamabad appeared doomed last night as scornful Indian officials considered the contents of President Pervez Musharraf's memoir and the Pakistani ruler blundered into repeated faux pas.
In a stark reversal of the optimism following the Indo-Pakistani talks in Havana 10 days ago, promising co-operation on terrorism, Indian officials and commentators denounced the book and lambasted General Musharraf for implying that India, like his own country, is involved with terrorist groups.
"The man is nuts," said a senior commentator in New Delhi. "Talk about a bull in a china shop."
Adding to the ferment was speculation about the length of the President's absence from Pakistan on his trip to the US, and resentment in Islamabad that his book In the Line of Fire was launched in New York, rather than at home.
General Musharraf is accompanied on his trip by an entourage of more than 90 officials, including cabinet members, and the cost is said to be astronomical. Critics say the trip is a book promotion tour, with one dubbing it "royalties before loyalties".
Having won in Havana the understanding of India's respected Prime Minister Manmohan Singh -- at some personal political cost to the Indian leader - General Musharraf embarrassed him yesterday by suggesting the agreement on terrorism was as much a test for India as it was for Pakistan - an apparent reference to claims that India is fomenting unrest in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan.
"Musharraf's sound bite is as good as calling India a sponsor of terrorism," The Economic Times said yesterday. "The statement is sure to anger the (Indian) Government as well as the sceptics of the deal, who have been alleging a paradigm shift in the approach towards Pakistan on terrorism."
Certainly it will do nothing to help Dr Singh sell the Havana accord to the many critics who have emerged in the past 10 days, and there is every chance it could sound its death knell.
The Pakistani ruler's book is causing anger and dismay in New Delhi, and seems sure to damage hopes for an improvement in relations that would assist the global war on terror.
For example, the book portrays the Kargil conflict between Pakistan and India in 1999 - which was a military disaster for Islamabad and for General Musharraf, who was the army chief at the time - as Pakistan's finest hour.
Kargil brought the two South Asian neighbours to the brink of nuclear war, but in his book General Musharraf claims a "favourable" military situation for his country was lost only because of mishandling by then prime minister Nawaz Sharif, whom he later deposed in a military coup.
Just about everything he says in the book about Kargil would probably be better left unsaid if he were genuinely seeking a rapprochement with New Delhi.
"Considered purely in military terms," he writes, "the Kargil operations were a landmark in the history of the Pakistani army." And he dismisses the Indian successes as "media hype", saying: "India raised the level of some of its achievements to mythical proportions."
Former Indian national security adviser Brajdesh Mishra responded: "What the general has said is a tissue of lies. He and the Pakistani army were the aggressors: India retaliated, Pakistan was defeated, and Musharraf was forced to go back."
And there was fury in New Delhi over the book's claims that India had "filched" nuclear centrifuge designs through spies in the network surrounding the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, AQ Khan.
"In 1999, I started seeing the first signs of some suspicious activities by AQ Khan," the President writes. "Our investigations revealed that Khan had started his activities as far back as 1987, primarily with Iran. Khan was running a very personalised underground network of technology transfers around the world with his base in Dubai. There is strong possibility the genesis of the Indian uranium enrichment program may also have its roots in the Dubai-based network and could be a copy of the Pakistani centrifuge design."
This is hotly denied in New Delhi, with commentators noting that India is still working on its centrifuge enrichment program.
The book is sure to anger Pakistan's powerful neighbour, and officials in New Delhi wondered why a leader would "publish such controversial things when he is still in office".
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20482985-2703,00.html
K. Subrahmanyam
Posted online: Wednesday, September 27, 2006 at 0000 hrs IST
It has taken seven years after the event for General Pervez Musharraf to come out with his version of the Kargil war. What an imaginative version! He tells us now that it was a great victory. It helped to internationalise the Kashmir issue. It was undertaken because the Indian side was preparing an offensive operation. He expects the Pakistanis and the rest of the world to accept this version after dozens of books have been written on the war, an overwhelming number of which give a very different version of the event. The general either has very great confidence in his persuasive powers or harbours utter contempt for the people of Pakistan, who are the primary audience of this book.
If India was preparing for an offensive action and this move was undertaken as a countermeasure, why was this charge not made earlier when the then Pakistani foreign minister, Sartaj Aziz, visited India in June 1999? Why did it not feature in the conversations of the director-generals of military operations? Why did not Prime Minster Nawaz Sharif raise the issue in his conversations with Atal Bihari Vajpayee? The general claims it was a great victory for his army. Why then is it that the officers and men of the Pakistan army who fought valiantly and got killed did not get the decent burial that was their due? Why were their bodies abandoned on Indian territory? There is no precedent in the history of warfare of a victorious army behaving this way. Why did Pakistan not own up to this victory? Why was it not advertised to the great pride of the Pakistani people till this book was published?
If Pakistan’s action was a preventive or preemptive action against a planned Indian offensive, there should have been no difficulty in it owning up to the presence of its Northern Light infantrymen across the LoC. But the myth of “mujahideen” was maintained even at the time of withdrawal. There was no need for Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz to cover himself with ridicule by claiming that the LoC was not clear, with the Indian side throwing at him the demarcation maps signed by General Hamid of Pakistan and General Bhagat of India.
Musharraf is economical with the truth when he claims that he told Nawaz Sharif, as he was leaving for Washington on July 3, 1999, that the military situation was favourable to Pakistan. Tololing was recaptured on June 17, Point 5149 in the Dras section on June 20, and Tiger Hill in the Dras sector was retaken even as Sharif was flying to Washington. Presumably the Americans did not share the general’s assessment of the military situation being favourable.
According to Bruce Riedel’s account, the Pakistani army was attempting to escalate the conflict while being pushed back, by attempting to deploy presumably nuclear missiles, as the Americans assessed. General Musharraf denies this and says that at that stage the Pakistani nuclear arsenal was not in a position to be deployed. He may well be right on that point.
However, the Americans with their satellite information were not confirming General Musharraf’s assessment to Prime Minister Sharif on the night of July 3, 1999 that the military situation was favourable to Pakistan.
General Musharraf claims Kargil as a great diplomatic success since it internationalised Kashmir. In fact, it was the first time India found that neither China nor the United States was prepared to back Pakistan on its misadventure and in a sense Kargil marked a turning point in Indo-US relations. President Clinton’s firm stand that there was no point in Sharif coming to Washington unless he was prepared to withdraw his forces impressed India favourably. Subsequently, in March 2000, on General Musharraf’s watch, Clinton said in his TV address to the entire Pakistani nation that borders could not be redrawn in blood. Evidently these developments count as favourable ones from General Musharraf’s point of view. No need for India to quarrel with him on this issue.
General Musharraf confirms the conclusion of the Kargil Committee report that the balance of probability suggested that Nawaz Sharif was fully in the picture. This, it may be recalled, was against the wisdom of the then top Indian political leadership who maintained that Sharif, who had signed the Lahore Declaration, could not have approved the Kargil aggression. While the general may not necessarily be truthful on all points in recounting the Kargil misadventure, it is clear that Sharif too has not been telling the truth on Kargil.
Obviously the book is a kind of election manifesto for the general to stand for election as president next year. Among the previous military rulers of Pakistan, President Ayub Khan and President Yahya Khan did not survive defeats in the military adventures they launched. In this case, the war was launched by Sharif, no doubt instigated by General Musharraf. Sharif has paid the penalty for launching the Kargil war.
General Musharraf is trying to salvage his position after having survived the aftermath of the Kargil debacle for seven years. His version of events is not likely to impress political leaders, analysts or military establishments around the globe. On the issue of Kargil, the audience he is aiming at is Pakistani servicemen and common people. Presumably he relies on public memory being proverbially short. Still he has taken high risks of being challenged in his own country. India has to deal with General Musharraf as a ruler of neighbouring Pakistan. There is no alternative to that. In doing that we have to bear in mind the mindset of the leader we are dealing with. In this case, he seems to be a person who is not highly concerned about his own credibility.
The writer was chairman of the Kargil Review Committee set up by the Government of India in 1999
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Hogwash: Brajesh, Gen MalikAdd to Clippings
Rajat Pandit
[ 26 Sep, 2006 0034hrs ISTTIMES NEWS NETWORK ]
RSS Feeds| SMS NEWS to 8888 for latest updates
NEW DELHI: Having served with Pakistan's elite Special Service Group as a commando, General Pervez Musharraf knows the importance of psychological operations.
But this time, he's clearly overreached by trying to pin the blame on India for the 1999 Kargil conflict. In his book, In the Line of Fire: A Memoir, Musharraf claims aggressive moves by Indian Army along the contentious LoC in 1998 forced Pakistan to reinforce its forward positions in the Kargil region, which eventually led to the conflict.
Plain hogwash by a person used to peddling lies, say the then national security advisor Brajesh Mishra and the then Army chief General V P Malik.
"I have read the chapter on Kargil in Musharraf's book...There are a lot of untruths in it. The book will further expose Musharraf as someone who cannot be believed," General Malik told TOI on Monday.
"Musharraf is trying to whitewash all the harm he did to Pakistan's polity and international standing by undertaking the Kargil misadventure. In the book, he tries to shift all the blame for the ceasefire and subsequent withdrawal of Pakistani forces from Kargil to Nawaz Sharif," he added.
Brajesh Mishra dismissed as a "bundle of lies" Musharraf's description of the Kargil conflict as a "landmark in the history of Pakistani Army" and said: "India did not cross the Line of Control... Pakistan Army did and it was defeated."
Mishra said: "According to estimates, Pak Army lost between 1,000 and 2,000 personnel."
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'Musharraf's book harming Pak'
Wednesday, September 27, 2006 09:05:41 am
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IN THE LINE OF FIRE: President Musharraf’s book has not been well received by senior bureaucrats in Pakistan
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf' is very much the man of the moment - courting controversy as pre release hype for his memoir 'In the line of Fire', which is up best seller lists a day after its release.
However, in Pakistan, people have not taken to his supposed revelations too kindly. Some even questioning his right to publish the memoir saying it may have breached the oath of office.
‘Musharraf has no achievement to his credit’
"I think he wrote this book at a time when he is thoroughly discredited; he has really no achievement to his credit," Roedad Khan, a former senior bureaucrat and analyst, told Reuters on Tuesday (September 26).
General Musharraf, who has controversially retained his role as army chief, has had to walk a tightrope since forging an alliance with the United States after Sept 11, 2001, as the majority of Pakistanis disagree strongly with US foreign policy.
But for foreign readers, Musharraf's chapters dealing with the war on terrorism could generate a sense of relief that the general is still at the helm. "He (Musharraf) is telling the West: "You have kept me there, you know, if you want to win the war on terror. And you have to allow me to keep my uniform, you know, as Chief of Army Staff if you want me to win this war,"' Khan said, adding, "These are the arguments he is using, and I think he is succeeding."
The Pakistani president claimed he wrote the book as he wanted the world to understand Pakistan better, but his own people don't seem to be buying his claim.
Analysts in Pakistan are also worried about the president writing about security issues and relations with other countries.
‘Musharraf the only one benefited’
Lieutenant-General Asad Durrani, Former Chief Of Pakistan's Top Spy Agency, ISI, says, "I've thought a great deal about it. Does it (Musharraf's Book) help Pakistan, its image or its policies, its relations with anyone at all? And I still have to find a positive answer."
Durrani further adds, "When we talk about Kargil of course we will end up annoying very many people in India, which may have been alright if we had actually talked about Kargil in a manner in which we generally have known it. But trying to defend Kargil was not going to be helpful."
"All that I can conclude is the book only helps one man and that is Pervez Musharraf," says Durrani.
But as the controversies pile up so do the book sales. It’s already No. 7 on the Amazon.com bestseller list. Booksellers both in Islamabad and in the West say despite the high retail cost of the book, people were still buying it, boosting the capital's flagging book business.
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Now for some ghazals too
September 26, 2006
Hindustan Times (India)
It is standard practice for leading public figures to write their memoirs after they have reached the climax of their careers. They either unveil themselves and the goings-on during their time after they have stepped down from office (the memoirs of Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, Jaswant Singh, etc.), or their writings steer clear from their day job (Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s poems, Abdul Kalam’s soul-stirrers, etc). The author of In The Line of Fire does away with such niceties and, á la Hillary Clinton, Nicolas Sarkozy et al, writes a campaign manifesto-as-memoir. The President of Pakistan presents a dictatorial perspective of his handling of the ongoing war on terror, the ‘real’ reason behind the 1999 “counter-coup”, the shenanigans within Pakistani polity and the ‘personal bits’ with which he wants us to know that the dictator can become a cuddly elected President in 2007.
But the real bits that jump out and are the USP of the book are Pervez Musharraf’s observations involving India. He insists that it was India, not Pakistan, that started the Kargil conflict, which in turn led to “the initiative” being “wrested from India” and creating an imbalance in the “Indian system of forces”. Never mind the propaganda or empirical evidence, the General insists that India lost the war it had started. Strangely, though, he writes in the last line of the chapter: “... whatever movement has taken place so far in the direction of finding a solution to Kashmir is due considerably to the Kargil conflict.” Does this mean that he is giving India credit for leading the way via Kargil to an India-Pakistan peace process? Even the most rumbustious hawk in New Delhi will feel embarrassed to take such credit. Mr Musharraf also writes about a Dubai-based cartel that provided Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan-led nuclear programme with the wherewithals. A confession that is late is better than no confession. But to get to the bottom of his claim that India’s uranium enrichment programme could have come from the same network requires another set of memoirs — perhaps those of Dr Khan.
All this ‘remembrance of things past’ has already upset many in India. It is too early to tell whether J.K. Rowling is worried about competition. But Mr Musharraf is the man with whom Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will be talking about India-Pakistan ties. This is a serious issue that requires both tact and facts — not the subject of a future foray into a new sub-genre of fantasy fiction. For Mr Singh to find himself as the subject of Mr Musharraf’s next presidential memoir — as Richard Armitage finds himself in this one — could make him rethink opening his mouth. History is supposedly written by the victor. But history as presented by a fabulist in a memoir can be an effective spanner in the works. Forget Indian diplomats. Would you invite Mr Musharraf, the latest magic realist from the subcontinent, to dinner?
___________________________
Will Musharraf's book reopen old wounds?
By Shahzeb Jillani
BBC News, Washington
Not surprisingly, Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf's memoirs has generated a strong reaction.
Now he must respond to some of the strongest criticism and denials about his sensational claims made in In The Line of Fire.
In an interview with an American TV network before the book launch, Gen Musharraf said that the US had threatened to bomb Pakistan "back to the Stone Age" if it did not cooperate in the war on terror.
In a joint press briefing after meeting President Bush at the White House on Friday, he refused to clarify the comments saying "he was honour-bound" to the publishers not to discuss the book before the launch.
For his part, President Bush said he is not aware of his country making such a threat to Pakistan.
Startling claims
Moreover, Richard Armitage, the former US official Gen Musharraf names as having delivered the threat to his intelligence chief, has denied the remarks attributed to him.
Mr Armitage, however, admits that soon after 9/11 he did deliver "a strong message" to the Pakistanis that either they were with the US or against it in the US-led war on terror.
In his book, Gen Musharraf has also made some startling claims about the 1999 Kargil conflict with India.
He lauds Pakistan army's "landmark" performance during the Kargil conflict and claims that it was the Indian army which wanted to capture Pakistani territory in 1999 that finally led to the Kargil war.
For many Indians, Kargil is a painful episode of betrayal and military adventure by Pakistan.
No wonder then, that President Musharraf's latest claims have drawn bitter reaction from Indian politicians and the media.
"All that he is saying is a pack of lies. He attacked us and then lost. That's the reality," is how India's former national security advisor, Brajesh Mishra, sums up the popular Indian sentiment.
The renewed controversy over what led to the Kargil conflict and who was responsible for it comes at a time when nearly more than a week ago the two countries decided to resume the suspended peace talks.
During the recent meeting in Havana, Gen Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pledged to work together to resolve all their disputes, including Kashmir.
'Trust deficit'
For the first time, they also decided to set up a joint mechanism to fight terrorism, something Mr Singh's government is still facing a lot of criticism for from the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
According to Indian officials, in Havana, the two sides made significant progress in improving the "trust deficit" between the two South Asian rivals.
Now, analysts worry that Gen Musharraf's candid views about the Kargil conflict threaten to reopen old wounds and spoil the prevailing positive mood for dialogue between the two nations.
In Pakistan, Gen Musharraf's critics have taken strong exception to the way he is seen to be promoting his book during his official US visit.
The opposition has accused him as a self promoting military ruler seeking to make a fortune in the name of Pakistan.
But, say his supporters, like him or not, through his controversial disclosures, he has managed to sell the book as a must read on contemporary Pakistan.
Meanwhile, In The Line Of Fire, out at the book stands in the US and Pakistan since early Monday morning, is said to be selling fairly well.
The book ranked 17th and 18th on online book retailer Amazon.com and Barnes & Nobles best sellers list respectively just before its launch. Within hours, it jumped to 14th on Amazon list and 12th on Barnes & Nobles site.
Given the controversies it seems to have triggered, the book is expected to climb further on the best sellers list.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/5380350.stm
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The coming conflict with Pakistan
Indrajeet Rai
India Post Spetember 25, 2006
Is Pervez Musharraf on his way out? Though none can predict his fate with certitude, he is facing the most serious crisis and there are signs suggesting his likely departure. If he finally departs, or just manages to survive, what are the implications for India?
The killing of Akbar Khan Bugti by the Pakistan army "sent a clear message to Musharraf that his era is over", said the Khan of Kalat-Mir Suleman Dawood, a descendant of Balochistan's earlier rulers. Bugti's killing was reportedly against the wishes of the President.
Some forces within the Pakistan army, which do not wish the continuation of the Musharraf regime, had effected the killing to create trouble and embarrass him. Rumors of a possible coup against him have been going round for some time.
An indication, apart from Bugti's killing against the General's dictates, indicative of broad disaffection with Musharraf's rule, is a letter written on July 18 by a group of retired military and government officials, calling for the military's disengagement from political power and asking Musharraf to either resign as the Chief of the Army Staff or as the President.
An opinion poll conducted by the International Republic Institute of the US which was published in the Dawn, found that 48 percent were of the opinion that Musharraf should not hold two offices simultaneously.
What was more interesting in the poll was a desire for the return of democracy in the Pakistani populace with two-thirds voting for the return of the exiled Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif to the country and taking part in the coming elections.
Boxed in by these developments, Musharraf has two options to survive: either co-opt the Right, which will compromise his continuing to support the war on terror, or extract support from the moderates that will ask him to relinquish one of his posts and let democracy be re-ushered into the country.
It seems Musharraf has decided to lean towards the Right. As a first step to please them, Pakistan has signed a peace deal with the Taliban. According to this peace deal, signed by Dr Fakr-I-Alam on behalf of Pakistan, and seven militants on behalf of the Taliban Shura (Advisory Council), Pakistani forces and local mujahideen and ulemas will stop attacking each other.
It seems Pakistan has also promised not to arrest Osama bin Laden. As reported by ABC News, "Pakistani officials told ABC News that bin Laden would be spared from being arrested if the dreaded terrorist decides to lead a peaceful life."
The troops freed as a result of the Pakistan-Taliban agreement may be used for two purposes: Either to contain the unrest in the Balochistan or undertake a Kargil type adventure against India.
The latter strategy is in the pipeline, if media reports are believed. According to India's military intelligence, the movement of 19 division and some brigades is threatening Indian positions in Gulmarg and Poonch.
A Kargil-type adventure is not a certainty, but is a possibility. India cannot ignore the repercussions of the troop movements and the Pakistan-Taliban peace deal.
Musharraf is finding the going very difficult. He needs to do something urgently to reassert his hold on power. Nothing would suit him more than a skirmish with India.
He is not a man given to irrational decisions, however, given a chance he would like to tread a safer route to ensure his survival. The meeting between him and the Indian Prime Minister on the sidelines of the NAM summit in Havana was a chance for India and Pakistan to reach some kind of deal on Kashmir.
There was no new assurance from Musharraf on restraining cross-border terror, though the joint statement recalled commitments made in previous documents from 2004 to 2005.
On Jammu and Kashmir, the joint statement said the two leaders had useful discussions and there was a 'need to build on convergences and narrow down divergences'. If the General is not able to satisfy his home constituency on progress on Kashmir issue, adventurism could become his main escape route.
For India, this is the time to strive for a democratic Pakistan. For too long India has debated the trade-offs between dealing with a dictator-a one point reference like the King of Nepal and democratically elected rulers. Experience suggests that a democratic neighborhood is better suited to India's long term interests.
The Alliance for Restoration of Democracy, formed by political rivals Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, has started gaining ground in the Pakistan. Its high time India attempted to strengthen democracy in Pakistan, notwithstanding its principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of its neighbors.
To strengthen democracy in Pakistan, India might take a clue from American democracy promotion efforts. America has allocated specific funds to promote democracy in Iran by training opposition leaders and trying to bring a regime change there.
It has been interpreted as interference in internal affairs of Iran by some, but promoting democracy has more or less come to be accepted as a universal norm in the liberal world.
Besides, India needs to raise the issue of democracy and the coming elections in Pakistan in every international forum be it the United Nations General Assembly or the Commonwealth. A democratic Pakistan is in the interests of India and South Asia and the entire world.
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Indian wounds reopened by Musharraf's memoirs
By Y.P. Rajesh (yes guess who's not writing this article our lovely Pam)
Reuters
Tuesday, September 26, 2006; 6:12 AM
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The memoirs of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf have reopened old wounds in neighboring India and reinforced perceptions of the military ruler as a man who cannot be trusted.
Officials declined to comment immediately on the memoirs, published on Monday, but privately bridled at his criticism of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's sincerity and flexibility in pursuing the peace process between the neighbors.
They said the timing of the comments, written in June but published barely a week after Singh and Musharraf held a friendly meeting in Cuba, was unfortunate.
Analysts were also damning on Tuesday in their assessment of "In the Line of Fire."
"The book is full of chest-thumping machismo and self-aggrandizement," said Chidanand Rajghatta, the Washington-based foreign editor of the Times of India newspaper.
"Musharraf seems unrepentant about most things that matter in India, be it Kargil, terrorism or infiltration."
India accuses Pakistan of arming and training militants and sending them across the border to fight New Delhi's rule in disputed Kashmir.
The scars of a 1999 conflict in the northern Kashmir region of Kargil also still run deep in India, which blames Musharraf for pushing in separatist militants backed by Pakistani troops to seize mountain heights in an act of unprovoked aggression.
In his book, Musharraf described the operation as a military success for Pakistan, admitted for the first time that Pakistani troops were involved but maintained they did not cross a military ceasefire line.
Raking up the conflict again seven years later has only reopened old wounds.
Jaswant Singh, foreign minister in India's previous Hindu nationalist-led government at the time of Kargil, called Musharraf's version of events "incredible."
"Quite often, when you occupy high office, the distinction between fiction and fact, gets obliterated. This is fictional," Singh told the Times Now news channel.
"UNREPENTANT MILITARY ADVENTURISM"
"In the Line of Fire" was due to be available across India on Tuesday and book stores in New Delhi said they had been flooded by enquiries. But excerpts have been widely published.
Musharraf said the United States had threatened to bomb Pakistan if it did not support its war on terror but also boasted of the money which his army had earned in rewards for handing over senior members of al Qaeda.
"It seems the whole thing about being an ally in the war on terror and his peace moves is more out of convenience than conviction," Rajghatta said, adding that the book as a whole raised serious questions about Pakistan's leader.
"It reeks of unrepentant military adventurism and Washington, New Delhi and Kabul have to note that."
An Indian atomic energy official said the Pakistani president's claim that India's uranium enrichment program could be based on a Pakistani centrifuge design was laughable.
In a tongue-in-cheek editorial, the Indian Express newspaper said Musharraf could not be accused of being short on words.
"Now that the general has been there, done that ... it's the perfect time for him to head back home and turn his attention to things somewhat more substantial," it said.
"Like actually cracking down on the jehadi camps in his backyard. It could make a great bestseller some day."
________________
Musharraf's book infuriates India
Bruce Loudon, South Asia correspondent
September 27, 2006
HOPES for an improvement in relations between New Delhi and Islamabad appeared doomed last night as scornful Indian officials considered the contents of President Pervez Musharraf's memoir and the Pakistani ruler blundered into repeated faux pas.
In a stark reversal of the optimism following the Indo-Pakistani talks in Havana 10 days ago, promising co-operation on terrorism, Indian officials and commentators denounced the book and lambasted General Musharraf for implying that India, like his own country, is involved with terrorist groups.
"The man is nuts," said a senior commentator in New Delhi. "Talk about a bull in a china shop."
Adding to the ferment was speculation about the length of the President's absence from Pakistan on his trip to the US, and resentment in Islamabad that his book In the Line of Fire was launched in New York, rather than at home.
General Musharraf is accompanied on his trip by an entourage of more than 90 officials, including cabinet members, and the cost is said to be astronomical. Critics say the trip is a book promotion tour, with one dubbing it "royalties before loyalties".
Having won in Havana the understanding of India's respected Prime Minister Manmohan Singh -- at some personal political cost to the Indian leader - General Musharraf embarrassed him yesterday by suggesting the agreement on terrorism was as much a test for India as it was for Pakistan - an apparent reference to claims that India is fomenting unrest in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan.
"Musharraf's sound bite is as good as calling India a sponsor of terrorism," The Economic Times said yesterday. "The statement is sure to anger the (Indian) Government as well as the sceptics of the deal, who have been alleging a paradigm shift in the approach towards Pakistan on terrorism."
Certainly it will do nothing to help Dr Singh sell the Havana accord to the many critics who have emerged in the past 10 days, and there is every chance it could sound its death knell.
The Pakistani ruler's book is causing anger and dismay in New Delhi, and seems sure to damage hopes for an improvement in relations that would assist the global war on terror.
For example, the book portrays the Kargil conflict between Pakistan and India in 1999 - which was a military disaster for Islamabad and for General Musharraf, who was the army chief at the time - as Pakistan's finest hour.
Kargil brought the two South Asian neighbours to the brink of nuclear war, but in his book General Musharraf claims a "favourable" military situation for his country was lost only because of mishandling by then prime minister Nawaz Sharif, whom he later deposed in a military coup.
Just about everything he says in the book about Kargil would probably be better left unsaid if he were genuinely seeking a rapprochement with New Delhi.
"Considered purely in military terms," he writes, "the Kargil operations were a landmark in the history of the Pakistani army." And he dismisses the Indian successes as "media hype", saying: "India raised the level of some of its achievements to mythical proportions."
Former Indian national security adviser Brajdesh Mishra responded: "What the general has said is a tissue of lies. He and the Pakistani army were the aggressors: India retaliated, Pakistan was defeated, and Musharraf was forced to go back."
And there was fury in New Delhi over the book's claims that India had "filched" nuclear centrifuge designs through spies in the network surrounding the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, AQ Khan.
"In 1999, I started seeing the first signs of some suspicious activities by AQ Khan," the President writes. "Our investigations revealed that Khan had started his activities as far back as 1987, primarily with Iran. Khan was running a very personalised underground network of technology transfers around the world with his base in Dubai. There is strong possibility the genesis of the Indian uranium enrichment program may also have its roots in the Dubai-based network and could be a copy of the Pakistani centrifuge design."
This is hotly denied in New Delhi, with commentators noting that India is still working on its centrifuge enrichment program.
The book is sure to anger Pakistan's powerful neighbour, and officials in New Delhi wondered why a leader would "publish such controversial things when he is still in office".
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20482985-2703,00.html
Anyone, Anything, Anywhere
THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Friday, September 22, 2006
New York Times
Montevideo, Uruguay
The New Yorker once ran a cartoon by Peter Steiner of two dogs, with one sitting at a computer keyboard saying to the other, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”
Nobody also knows you’re Uruguay.
A tiny country of three million people, wedged between Brazil and Argentina, Uruguay has come from nowhere to partner with India’s biggest technology company, Tata Consultancy Services, to create in just four years one of the largest outsourcing operations in Latin America.
Yes, when Tata’s Indian employees in Mumbai are asleep, its 650 Uruguayan engineers and programmers now pick up the work and help run the computers and backroom operations for the likes of American Express, Procter & Gamble and some major U.S. banks — all from Montevideo.
How did this happen? One of the most interesting features of this era of globalization is how any entrepreneur — with the right imagination, Internet bandwidth and a small amount of capital — can assemble a global company by matching workers and customers from anywhere to do anything for anyone. Maybe the most important rule in today’s increasingly flat world is this: Whatever can be done, will be done — because so many people now have access to the tools of innovation and connectivity. The only question is: Will it be done by you or to you?
Gabriel Rozman decided it was going to be done by him. A retired partner from Ernst & Young who was raised in Uruguay, he hatched the idea of partnering with Tata to make Montevideo a global outsourcing hub. He did not have a single client or employee when he approached Tata. He had just two things: a gut instinct that Uruguay’s quality education system had produced plenty of good, low-cost engineers and a gut desire to do something good for Uruguay — the country that gave his Hungarian parents sanctuary from Hitler.
Four years later, TCS Iberoamerica can’t hire workers fast enough. When I visited its head office, people were working on computers in hallways and stairwells. (Mr. Rozman also oversees 1,300 employees in Brazil and 1,200 in Chile.) It turns out that many multinationals like the idea of spreading out their risks and not having all their outsourcing done from India — especially after one big U.S. bank nearly had to shut down last year when a flood in Mumbai paralyzed its India data center the same day a hurricane paralyzed its Florida operation. And there is no risk of nuclear war with Pakistan here.
“When I first approached this big U.S. bank to outsource some of its services to Montevideo, instead of India,” recalled Mr. Rozman, “the guy I was speaking with said, ‘I don’t even know where Montevideo is.’ So I said to him, ‘That’s the point!’ ”
Another factor, added Mr. Rozman, was that multinationals that were depending on Indian firms alone to run their backrooms 24 hours a day were getting the third team for eight hours, since the best Indian engineers didn’t want to work the late-night shift — the heart of America’s day. By creating an outsourcing center in Montevideo, Tata could offer its clients its best Indian engineers during India’s day (America’s night) and its best Uruguayan engineers during America’s day (India’s night).
Most employees here are Uruguayans, but there are also lots of Indians sent over by Tata. It produces both a culture shock — Montevideo doesn’t even have an Indian restaurant — and a cultural cacophony.
The firm runs on strict Tata principles, as if it were in Mumbai, so to see Uruguayans pretending to be Indians serving Americans is quite a scene. Said Rosina Marmion, 27, an Uruguayan manager, “Our customers expect us to behave like Indians — to react the same way.”
Also, Latin culture, unlike Indian, is very nonhierarchical. “The Indians were not used to someone who says ‘no,’ ” explained Ricardo Zengin, 34, a systems analyst. But eventually, “they understand that you are not saying it to challenge their authority but because you think it can be done better another way. ... In Latin culture, everything involves a discussion.”
Uruguayans tell a joke about themselves that goes: If you get diagnosed with a terminal illness, move to Uruguay immediately because everything happens 20 years later here.
In outsourcing, though, Uruguay has leapt ahead of its neighbors by being the first to understand what could be done — that in today’s world having an Indian company led by a Hungarian-Uruguayan servicing American banks with Montevidean engineers managed by Indian technologists who have learned to eat Uruguayan veggie is just the new normal.
Friday, September 22, 2006
New York Times
Montevideo, Uruguay
The New Yorker once ran a cartoon by Peter Steiner of two dogs, with one sitting at a computer keyboard saying to the other, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”
Nobody also knows you’re Uruguay.
A tiny country of three million people, wedged between Brazil and Argentina, Uruguay has come from nowhere to partner with India’s biggest technology company, Tata Consultancy Services, to create in just four years one of the largest outsourcing operations in Latin America.
Yes, when Tata’s Indian employees in Mumbai are asleep, its 650 Uruguayan engineers and programmers now pick up the work and help run the computers and backroom operations for the likes of American Express, Procter & Gamble and some major U.S. banks — all from Montevideo.
How did this happen? One of the most interesting features of this era of globalization is how any entrepreneur — with the right imagination, Internet bandwidth and a small amount of capital — can assemble a global company by matching workers and customers from anywhere to do anything for anyone. Maybe the most important rule in today’s increasingly flat world is this: Whatever can be done, will be done — because so many people now have access to the tools of innovation and connectivity. The only question is: Will it be done by you or to you?
Gabriel Rozman decided it was going to be done by him. A retired partner from Ernst & Young who was raised in Uruguay, he hatched the idea of partnering with Tata to make Montevideo a global outsourcing hub. He did not have a single client or employee when he approached Tata. He had just two things: a gut instinct that Uruguay’s quality education system had produced plenty of good, low-cost engineers and a gut desire to do something good for Uruguay — the country that gave his Hungarian parents sanctuary from Hitler.
Four years later, TCS Iberoamerica can’t hire workers fast enough. When I visited its head office, people were working on computers in hallways and stairwells. (Mr. Rozman also oversees 1,300 employees in Brazil and 1,200 in Chile.) It turns out that many multinationals like the idea of spreading out their risks and not having all their outsourcing done from India — especially after one big U.S. bank nearly had to shut down last year when a flood in Mumbai paralyzed its India data center the same day a hurricane paralyzed its Florida operation. And there is no risk of nuclear war with Pakistan here.
“When I first approached this big U.S. bank to outsource some of its services to Montevideo, instead of India,” recalled Mr. Rozman, “the guy I was speaking with said, ‘I don’t even know where Montevideo is.’ So I said to him, ‘That’s the point!’ ”
Another factor, added Mr. Rozman, was that multinationals that were depending on Indian firms alone to run their backrooms 24 hours a day were getting the third team for eight hours, since the best Indian engineers didn’t want to work the late-night shift — the heart of America’s day. By creating an outsourcing center in Montevideo, Tata could offer its clients its best Indian engineers during India’s day (America’s night) and its best Uruguayan engineers during America’s day (India’s night).
Most employees here are Uruguayans, but there are also lots of Indians sent over by Tata. It produces both a culture shock — Montevideo doesn’t even have an Indian restaurant — and a cultural cacophony.
The firm runs on strict Tata principles, as if it were in Mumbai, so to see Uruguayans pretending to be Indians serving Americans is quite a scene. Said Rosina Marmion, 27, an Uruguayan manager, “Our customers expect us to behave like Indians — to react the same way.”
Also, Latin culture, unlike Indian, is very nonhierarchical. “The Indians were not used to someone who says ‘no,’ ” explained Ricardo Zengin, 34, a systems analyst. But eventually, “they understand that you are not saying it to challenge their authority but because you think it can be done better another way. ... In Latin culture, everything involves a discussion.”
Uruguayans tell a joke about themselves that goes: If you get diagnosed with a terminal illness, move to Uruguay immediately because everything happens 20 years later here.
In outsourcing, though, Uruguay has leapt ahead of its neighbors by being the first to understand what could be done — that in today’s world having an Indian company led by a Hungarian-Uruguayan servicing American banks with Montevidean engineers managed by Indian technologists who have learned to eat Uruguayan veggie is just the new normal.
Best companies to work for
Thank your stars if you work for one of these:
The top 100 companies — in alphabetical order — for working mothers, as determined by Working Mother magazine:
Abbott Laboratories, Abbott Park, Ill.
Accenture Ltd., New York, N.Y.
Aflac Inc., Columbus, Ga.
Allstate Corp., Northbrook, Ill.
American Express Co., New York, N.Y.
Arnold & Porter LLP, Washington, D.C.
AstraZeneca PLC, Wilmington, Del.
Avon Products Inc., New York, N.Y.
Bank of America Corp., Charlotte, N.C.
Baptist Health South Florida, Coral Gables, Fla.
Bayer AG, Pittsburgh, Pa.
Bon Secours Richmond Health System, Richmond, Va.
Booz Allen Hamilton, McLean, Va.
The Boston Consulting Group, Boston, Mass.
Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., New York, N.Y.
Bronson Healthcare Group, Kalamazoo, Mich.
Capital One Financial Corp., McLean, Va.
Carlson Cos., Minnetonka, Minn.
Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, Atlanta, Ga.
Children's Memorial Hospital, Chicago, Ill.
Citigroup Inc., New York, N.Y.
CJW Medical Center, Richmond, Va.
Colgate-Palmolive Co., New York, N.Y.
Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.
Covington & Burling LLP, Washington, D.C.
Credit Suisse Group, New York, N.Y.
DaimlerChrysler AG, Auburn Hills, Mich.
Deloitte & Touche USA LLP, New York, N.Y.
Deutsche Bank AG, New York, N.Y.
Discovery Communications Inc., Silver Spring, Md.
Dow Corning, Midland, Mich.
DuPont Co., Wilmington, Del.
Eli Lilly & Co., Indianapolis, Ind.
Ernst & Young LLP, New York, N.Y.
Fannie Mae, Washington, D.C.
First Horizon National Corp., Memphis, Tenn.
First National Bank of Omaha, Omaha, Neb.
Ford Motor Co., Dearborn, Mivh.
Genentech Inc., South San Francisco, Calif.
General Electric Co., Fairfield, Conn.
General Mills Inc., Minneapolis, Minn.
GlaxoSmithKline PLC, Philadelphia, PA
Goldman Sachs Group Inc., New York, N.Y.
Grant Thornton LLP, Chicago, Ill.
Gurwin Jewish Geriatric Center, Commack, N.Y.
Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
Hewlett Packard Co., Palo Alto, Calif.
HSBC USA Inc., Prospect Heights, Ill.
IBM Corp., Armonk, N.Y.
Ikea, Plymouth Meeting, Pa.
Inova Health System, Falls Church, Va.
JFK Medical Center, Atlantis, Fla.
Johnson & Johnson, New Brunswick, N.J.
JPMorgan Chase & Co., New York, N.Y.
Kellogg Co., Battle Creek, Mich.
KPMG LLP, New York, N.Y.
Kraft Foods Inc., Northfield, Ill.
Lego Systems Inc., Enfield, Conn.
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., New York, N.Y.
Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Mass.
Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co., Springfield, Mass.
McGraw-Hill Cos., New York, N.Y.
Merck & Co., Whitehouse Station, N.J.
Mercy Health System, Jamesville, Wis.
MetLife Inc., Long Island City, N.Y.
Microsoft Corp., Redmond, Wash.
Morgan Stanley, New York, N.Y.
Motorola Inc., Schaumburg, Ill.
Northern Trust Corp., Chicago, Ill.
Northwestern Memorial Healthcare, Chicago, Ill.
Novartis AG, East Hanover, N.J.
Patagonia Inc., Ventura, Calif.
Pearson PLC, Upper Saddle River, N.J.
Pfizer Inc., New York, N.Y.
Phoenix Cos., Hartford, Conn.
Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, New York, N.Y.
PNC Financial Services Group Inc., Pittsburgh, Pa.
PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP, New York, N.Y.
Principal Financial Group, Des Moines, Iowa
Procter & Gamble Co., Cincinnati, Ohio
Providence Alaska Medical Center, Anchorage, Ala.
Prudential Financial Inc., Newark, N.J.
Republic Bancorp., Owosso, Mich.
Rodale Inc., Emmaus, Pa.
RSM McGladrey Inc., Bloomington, Minn.
S.C. Johnson & Son Inc., Racine, Wis.
Schering-Plough, Kenilworth, N.J.
Scripps Health, San Diego, Calif.
Texas Instruments Inc., Dallas, Texas
Timberland Co., Stratham, N.H.
Trihealth, Cincinnati, Ohio
Turner Broadcasting System Inc., Atlanta, Ga.
UBS, New York, N.Y.
Union Pacific Railroad, Omaha, Neb.
Verizon Communications Inc., Bedminster, N.J.
Wachovia Corp., Charlotte, N.C.
Wells Fargo & Co., San Francisco, Calif.
West Virginia University Hospitals, Morgantown, W.Va.
Wyeth, Madison, N.J.
Yale-New Haven Hospital, New Haven, Conn.
Thailand - thank you Joshua
Cheap Trick E-mail
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By Josh Kurlantzick
The New Republic Online, August 24, 2006
When I moved to Bangkok seven years ago, John lived down the hall in my building, a grim collection of one-room studio apartments with water-stained walls surrounding a small central courtyard and a tiny pool. I would run into him in the complex's dilapidated gym; he would be loading weights onto a rusting bar as I tried to fix the tread on the aging exercise bike. I was lonely in Bangkok, living alone for the first time in my life--in a foreign city where I could barely speak the language. I hadn't been homesick since my first year of summer camp, but now I sometimes cried at night. So, when John made conversation at the gym, I glommed on, desperately trying to keep our small talk going.
Until I saw John's girlfriend, that is. One evening, I noticed John with his arm around a small Thai woman. He walked upstairs and I trailed behind, recovering from my workout. As he turned to enter his apartment, I glimpsed his lady's face--the face of a preteen girl.
I remembered John, unhappily, this weekend, as news broke that the alleged killer of JonBenét Ramsey, a man named John Mark Karr, had surfaced in the Thai capital. Karr apparently had been teaching English at elite schools in Thailand and living out of a hotel. After Karr was arrested, some Thais and many foreign reporters seemed shocked that the supposed killer had turned up so far away from Colorado, in a place no one would have thought to look--perhaps why it had taken ten years for police to track him down.
Sadly, Bangkok should have been one of the first places they looked. Political scientists often blame failed states like Afghanistan or Somalia for breeding terrorism and crime. But, in actuality, criminals prefer semi-failed states or cities, where you can live a good life without worrying too much about arrest. After all, who wants to live in Kabul or Mogadishu? No, Bangkok's combination of comfortable lifestyle, sophisticated financial institutions, endemic child poverty, and lax legal system make it perfect for fugitives, sex offenders, terrorists, and other deviants.
Karr, who had faced child porn charges in California in 2001, was hardly the first. Less than a week before Karr's arrest, an infamous Australian pedophile emerged in Thailand, after being accused of sexual offenses against dozens of Australian kids. And, when I worked in Bangkok in 2000, a similar story erupted after Eric Rosser, a pianist at one of the city's fanciest hotels, admitted to local reporters after his arrest in February, "I am a pedophile. ... [N]ormal sex play of children was an obsession with me." Rosser, who also ran a music school for children in Thailand, was charged as a co-conspirator in a child porn ring back in Indiana the following month and made the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list for his child sex crimes that year after jumping bail in Thailand.
And it's not hard to find men like Rosser and Karr in Bangkok. According to one study, Thailand's sex industry produces revenue of some $1.5 billion per year, and several nongovernmental organizations estimate that there are over 200,000 children in the Thai sex industry. Pedophile groups have set up hundreds of websites focusing on Thai children, and face, a leading Bangkok NGO, believes that at least 5,000 foreigners come to Thailand every year just to have sex with kids.
I knew the hotel district where Karr lived well; it was located near one of Bangkok's red-light districts. Friends and I used to frequent a (non-sex) dive bar in the area famous for its collection of old rock and jazz records and videos. When we'd stumble out after too many glasses of Singha, we'd walk by crowds of sixtysomething men leading preteen boys and girls by the hand in the street, often taking them back to the Malaysia Hotel, a seedy joint full of child prostitutes and drug dealers.
Sometimes, the sixtysomethings would take their victims to nearby Pattaya, a sleazy beach resort two hours from Bangkok where street urchins wander the town, selling flower garlands and offering sex for two or three dollars. There, the foreign men would blend into the crowds of pedophiles. Unlike other neighboring countries--such as Cambodia, which also has a serious child prostitution problem, but where the number of resident foreigners is so small that pedophiles stand out more--Thailand has so many foreign residents that local police could never track all the law-breakers.
Though Thailand has tried to crack down on child sex and other crimes by foreigners, even when the Thai police do make an arrest, they often cannot hold onto their man. In 2003 alone, Thai authorities fired 18 cops for their complicity in trafficking, and police often take cuts from brothels. A few months after Rosser was arrested, I wound up tracking another story. An Indian man named Chhota Rajan, alleged to be a major mafia leader in Bombay, had somehow escaped from a Bangkok hospital by climbing out the window on a rope, even though he was under police guard.
Little wonder, then, that the United States has passed a law making it easier to prosecute pedophiles in the United States, rather rely on Thailand's legal system. Now, Karr is back in the States, ten years too late.
Joshua Kurlantzick is a special correspondent for The New Republic.
By Josh Kurlantzick
The New Republic Online, August 24, 2006
When I moved to Bangkok seven years ago, John lived down the hall in my building, a grim collection of one-room studio apartments with water-stained walls surrounding a small central courtyard and a tiny pool. I would run into him in the complex's dilapidated gym; he would be loading weights onto a rusting bar as I tried to fix the tread on the aging exercise bike. I was lonely in Bangkok, living alone for the first time in my life--in a foreign city where I could barely speak the language. I hadn't been homesick since my first year of summer camp, but now I sometimes cried at night. So, when John made conversation at the gym, I glommed on, desperately trying to keep our small talk going.
Until I saw John's girlfriend, that is. One evening, I noticed John with his arm around a small Thai woman. He walked upstairs and I trailed behind, recovering from my workout. As he turned to enter his apartment, I glimpsed his lady's face--the face of a preteen girl.
I remembered John, unhappily, this weekend, as news broke that the alleged killer of JonBenét Ramsey, a man named John Mark Karr, had surfaced in the Thai capital. Karr apparently had been teaching English at elite schools in Thailand and living out of a hotel. After Karr was arrested, some Thais and many foreign reporters seemed shocked that the supposed killer had turned up so far away from Colorado, in a place no one would have thought to look--perhaps why it had taken ten years for police to track him down.
Sadly, Bangkok should have been one of the first places they looked. Political scientists often blame failed states like Afghanistan or Somalia for breeding terrorism and crime. But, in actuality, criminals prefer semi-failed states or cities, where you can live a good life without worrying too much about arrest. After all, who wants to live in Kabul or Mogadishu? No, Bangkok's combination of comfortable lifestyle, sophisticated financial institutions, endemic child poverty, and lax legal system make it perfect for fugitives, sex offenders, terrorists, and other deviants.
Karr, who had faced child porn charges in California in 2001, was hardly the first. Less than a week before Karr's arrest, an infamous Australian pedophile emerged in Thailand, after being accused of sexual offenses against dozens of Australian kids. And, when I worked in Bangkok in 2000, a similar story erupted after Eric Rosser, a pianist at one of the city's fanciest hotels, admitted to local reporters after his arrest in February, "I am a pedophile. ... [N]ormal sex play of children was an obsession with me." Rosser, who also ran a music school for children in Thailand, was charged as a co-conspirator in a child porn ring back in Indiana the following month and made the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list for his child sex crimes that year after jumping bail in Thailand.
And it's not hard to find men like Rosser and Karr in Bangkok. According to one study, Thailand's sex industry produces revenue of some $1.5 billion per year, and several nongovernmental organizations estimate that there are over 200,000 children in the Thai sex industry. Pedophile groups have set up hundreds of websites focusing on Thai children, and face, a leading Bangkok NGO, believes that at least 5,000 foreigners come to Thailand every year just to have sex with kids.
I knew the hotel district where Karr lived well; it was located near one of Bangkok's red-light districts. Friends and I used to frequent a (non-sex) dive bar in the area famous for its collection of old rock and jazz records and videos. When we'd stumble out after too many glasses of Singha, we'd walk by crowds of sixtysomething men leading preteen boys and girls by the hand in the street, often taking them back to the Malaysia Hotel, a seedy joint full of child prostitutes and drug dealers.
Sometimes, the sixtysomethings would take their victims to nearby Pattaya, a sleazy beach resort two hours from Bangkok where street urchins wander the town, selling flower garlands and offering sex for two or three dollars. There, the foreign men would blend into the crowds of pedophiles. Unlike other neighboring countries--such as Cambodia, which also has a serious child prostitution problem, but where the number of resident foreigners is so small that pedophiles stand out more--Thailand has so many foreign residents that local police could never track all the law-breakers.
Though Thailand has tried to crack down on child sex and other crimes by foreigners, even when the Thai police do make an arrest, they often cannot hold onto their man. In 2003 alone, Thai authorities fired 18 cops for their complicity in trafficking, and police often take cuts from brothels. A few months after Rosser was arrested, I wound up tracking another story. An Indian man named Chhota Rajan, alleged to be a major mafia leader in Bombay, had somehow escaped from a Bangkok hospital by climbing out the window on a rope, even though he was under police guard.
Little wonder, then, that the United States has passed a law making it easier to prosecute pedophiles in the United States, rather rely on Thailand's legal system. Now, Karr is back in the States, ten years too late.
Joshua Kurlantzick is a special correspondent for The New Republic.
how can we let this go on?
Karzai hasn't named Pakistan, but has been clearly inferring for months that his neighbor to the south and east has been soft on the ethnically Pashtun, Islamic fundamentalist Taliban, which has roots in both countries.
On Tuesday, Afghanistan's elected leader said: "We know our problems. We have difficulties. But Afghanistan also knows where the problem is, in extremism, in madrassas preaching hatred, places by the name of madrassas preaching hatred."
Musharraf lashes out at Karzai on terror issue
Updated Tue. Sep. 26 2006 11:27 PM ET
CTV.ca News Staff
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060926/musharraf_karzai_060926/20060926?hub=TopStories
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Karzai doubts Mush word on peace movesAdd to Clippings
[ 27 Sep, 2006 1004hrs ISTTIMES NEWS NETWORK ]
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WASHINGTON: Afghanistan's elected president Hamid Karzai obliquely blamed Pakistan for continued terror attacks in his troubled nation, pointing to hate-spewing madrassas in his neighbour country as the primary source of trouble.
At a White House news conference on Tuesday, with President Bush by his side, Karzai was restrained in his criticism of Pakistan but there was no mistaking his skepticism about the commitment of "my brother Musharraf" in the war on terrorism.
The Afghan president, who has been exchanging harsh words through the media with the Pakistani dictator while both are in the US, said he would "wait and see” how Pakistan's truce with tribals in Waziristan would work.
"The most important element of the agreement for us is that no terrorists should be allowed to cross into Afghanistan," Karzai said, suggesting clearly that Pakistan is the sanctuary for terrorists. "We will back any move that will deny terror sanctuaries in Waziristan or the troubled territories of Pakistan."
Karzai has been carrying his complaints against Musharraf and Pakistan to Bush, who is trying to broker peace between the neighbours.
Two of the four questions at the White House presser related to Afghansitan's tensions with Pakistan, leading Bush to joke that he would be observing the body language of Karzai and Musharraf when he hosts them for Iftar dinner on Wednesday.
Pakistan has been mocking Karzai, saying he is barely in control of Kabul. On Monday, Musharraf aggravated matters by advising Karzai to get his know his own country better.
Karzai has been no less testy this past week in his public comments, saying what Pakistan is doing in Afghanistan is akin to training snakes and the snakes would one day come back to bite Pakistan.
At Tuesday’s news conference, Karzai once again seemed to blame Pakistan-patronized Taliban for his country’s travails, speaking about how they had closed schools and destroyed the education system of the country, setting Afghanistan back by decades.
Axis of Sketchy Allies
MAUREEN DOWD
Friday, September 22, 2006
New York Times
It helps to plug your book at the White House.
After Pervez Musharraf coyly sidestepped a question at a news conference with President Bush about his claim on “60 Minutes” that Richard Armitage threatened to bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age if it did not cooperate in routing the Taliban in Afghanistan, noting that he had to save such juicy tidbits for his book’s publication next week, he shot up over 1,000 spots on Amazon.com.
General Musharraf told Steve Kroft he found the Stone Age crack “very rude,’’ and Mr. Armitage was on the defensive yesterday, explaining that he had been tough with Pakistan just after 9/11 but had not made any Flintstones threats.
The former deputy to Colin Powell needn’t apologize. That was the last time our foreign policy was on track, when we were pursuing the real enemy. It’s all been downhill from there.
The Pakistan president is a smooth operator, a military dictator cruising around the capital with his elegant wife and enormous security contingent, talking about how much he likes democracy, which he won’t yet allow.
He may have more respect for checks and balances than Dick Cheney, but that’s not saying much.
On the subject of Osama, he’s so slippery you want to lock him in a room with the muscle-bound Mr. Armitage. General ... General, as W. called him in that famous campaign pop quiz, tried to persuade Mr. Bush that the shabby truce he recently made with tribal leaders, agreeing that the Pakistani Army would stay out of the wild border area next to Afghanistan — where Osama and other Al Qaeda and Taliban members are believed to be hiding — was really “against” the militants.
The Pakistan government has, in effect, simply turned over the North Waziristan area to the militants. ABC News quoted Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan Khan of Pakistan as saying that the deal was an implicit amnesty, and that Osama “would not be taken into custody” as long as he was “being like a peaceful citizen.”
American officials are dubious about Mr. Musharraf’s commitment to destroying Al Qaeda and the Taliban. But at the press conference, W., who no doubt thinks he has seen into General ... General’s soul, acted as though he were willing to believe the Pakistani president when he says he is “on the hunt” for Osama and the Taliban at the same time he’s setting up a safe haven for them — and getting huffy at the idea that American forces have the right to go into Pakistan to track Osama.
“Americans who are concerned about a recurrence of 9/11 are worried about the Axis of Evil when the real problem is the Axis of Allies — Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Britain,’’ the British historian Niall Ferguson says. “The terrorists are funded in Saudi Arabia, they’re trained in Pakistan, and they organize their plots quite easily in London.’’
Mr. Ferguson, who analyzes evildoers and despots in his new book, “The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West,’’ observes that Mr. Musharraf could not survive if he truly tried to break up the cozy relationship between militants, tribal leaders and some in his Army and intelligence service.
The Paks, as W. and Vice like to call them, are at the heart of the Faustian deal the Bush administration has made. The justification for invading Iraq was that they couldn’t allow a dictator who might be harboring terrorists to stay in power. But their great ally in the war on terror is General Musharraf, a dictator who appears to be harboring terrorists, including the one we want most.
Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, who is coming to the White House next week to dine with W. and General ... General, expressed a sly skepticism about his neighbor’s protestations that he is strategizing against militants. As David Sanger reported, the Afghan leader told Times editors and reporters at a meeting Thursday that he had tried to get Pakistan’s help in repelling the resurgent Taliban by giving the Pakistanis “information on training ground, on operation, people, their phone numbers, their G.P.S. locations.’’
“Our friends come back to us and say this information is old,’’ Mr. Karzai continued. “Maybe. But it means they were there.”
Asked where Osama was, he smiled and replied: “If I said he was in Pakistan, President Musharraf would be mad at me. And if I said he was in Afghanistan, it would not be true.”
We may not have Osama, but at least W. helped General ...General with his Amazon ranking. “Buy the book,” the president recommended as the two allies wrapped up.
Military or publicity coup?
Military or publicity coup?
Nirupama Subramanian
The Hindu (India)
Tuesday, Sep 26, 2006
ISLAMABAD: There is an interesting line in President Pervez Musharraf's book In the Line of Fire, well before it begins.
The book was available in bookstores in Islamabad a few hours before the New York launch. Store owners reported brisk sales, with one saying he had sold 200 copies in under an hour.
On the title page, under the name of the publisher Simon & Schuster, it says A CBS Company.
CBS is the media giant that owns CBS TV, on which President Pervez Musharraf said that the then Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, had threatened to bomb Pakistan "back to the Stone Age".
Last week, with just days to go for the book launch, CBS TV put out excerpts from the interview on its programme, 60 Minutes, including the bomb-you-back-to-the-Stone Age line, arousing wide interest in the book.
The Pakistan President's refusal to say anything more on the subject at a joint press conference with U.S. President George Bush at the White House, on the plea that he was "honour-bound" to his publisher, heightened the interest.
Some were willing to believe the "straight-talking" President had unknowingly pre-empted his own book launch, and had been reined back by the publisher. Many smelt a marketing stunt.
Considering the publisher and broadcaster are owned by the same parent company, the question is bound to come up again: did the one not know what the other was up to, or were they both partners in a planned publicity coup?
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One that flew over the coup’s nest
The Hindustan Times (India)
September 25, 2006
As far as sales pitches go, Sunday’s rumours that a coup was in progress in Pakistan came at a perfect time — a day before the launch of Pervez Musharraf’s autobiography, In The Line of Fire. A power failure, of the electrical kind, throughout the country, along with the news that the President was undergoing an unscheduled medical check-up in Texas, had the grapevine buzzing.
But as the Punjabi wag currently visiting the US stated, the reports of a coup have been greatly exaggerated. The funnier line from Mr Musharraf was, however, that “these reports are absolute nonsense and thank God we are not a banana republic... we are a normal, stable country”. But surely, the General can forgive us, as well as his own countrymen, for thinking that the mice may well have been at play while the cat was away considering in October 1999, General Musharraf had to dash back from outside the country (Sri Lanka) to conduct his own coup. Then, as on Sunday, the first public sign of a coup was TV stations going off air. A power failure can be a surer sign that a transfer of power, of the political kind, is taking place.
Black-outs, of course, mean different things in different places. In Delhi, they normally mean business as usual. In New York, they could trigger red alerts before something apocalyptic. In certain parts of Pakistan, like in Quetta where crowds cheered on the streets, it can mean the removal of a government. But perish that thought. Pervez Musharraf, unlike Thaksin Shinawatra, has a book to sell. A putsch at this time just won’t do.
Nirupama Subramanian
The Hindu (India)
Tuesday, Sep 26, 2006
ISLAMABAD: There is an interesting line in President Pervez Musharraf's book In the Line of Fire, well before it begins.
The book was available in bookstores in Islamabad a few hours before the New York launch. Store owners reported brisk sales, with one saying he had sold 200 copies in under an hour.
On the title page, under the name of the publisher Simon & Schuster, it says A CBS Company.
CBS is the media giant that owns CBS TV, on which President Pervez Musharraf said that the then Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, had threatened to bomb Pakistan "back to the Stone Age".
Last week, with just days to go for the book launch, CBS TV put out excerpts from the interview on its programme, 60 Minutes, including the bomb-you-back-to-the-Stone Age line, arousing wide interest in the book.
The Pakistan President's refusal to say anything more on the subject at a joint press conference with U.S. President George Bush at the White House, on the plea that he was "honour-bound" to his publisher, heightened the interest.
Some were willing to believe the "straight-talking" President had unknowingly pre-empted his own book launch, and had been reined back by the publisher. Many smelt a marketing stunt.
Considering the publisher and broadcaster are owned by the same parent company, the question is bound to come up again: did the one not know what the other was up to, or were they both partners in a planned publicity coup?
_______________________
One that flew over the coup’s nest
The Hindustan Times (India)
September 25, 2006
As far as sales pitches go, Sunday’s rumours that a coup was in progress in Pakistan came at a perfect time — a day before the launch of Pervez Musharraf’s autobiography, In The Line of Fire. A power failure, of the electrical kind, throughout the country, along with the news that the President was undergoing an unscheduled medical check-up in Texas, had the grapevine buzzing.
But as the Punjabi wag currently visiting the US stated, the reports of a coup have been greatly exaggerated. The funnier line from Mr Musharraf was, however, that “these reports are absolute nonsense and thank God we are not a banana republic... we are a normal, stable country”. But surely, the General can forgive us, as well as his own countrymen, for thinking that the mice may well have been at play while the cat was away considering in October 1999, General Musharraf had to dash back from outside the country (Sri Lanka) to conduct his own coup. Then, as on Sunday, the first public sign of a coup was TV stations going off air. A power failure can be a surer sign that a transfer of power, of the political kind, is taking place.
Black-outs, of course, mean different things in different places. In Delhi, they normally mean business as usual. In New York, they could trigger red alerts before something apocalyptic. In certain parts of Pakistan, like in Quetta where crowds cheered on the streets, it can mean the removal of a government. But perish that thought. Pervez Musharraf, unlike Thaksin Shinawatra, has a book to sell. A putsch at this time just won’t do.
Monday, September 25, 2006
Coups in Pakistan
Constable writing about the reports of a coup in Pakistan (Widespread Outage Spurs Coup Rumors In Pakistan, Technical Troubles Blamed; Musharraf 'in Good Health' By Pamela Constable Washington Post Foreign Service Monday, September 25, 2006; Page A16) had this to say as background on Musharraf:
“Pakistan has had a history of military intervention in civilian politics ever since it was founded as a Muslim democracy in 1947. While elections have been held regularly, civilian rule has been repeatedly interrupted by the army or other non-elected figures.
Musharraf, 63, who is chief of Pakistan's army staff, would be highly unlikely to fall to a military coup, although it has been reported that some of the senior army commanders, who operate as a consensual policy group within the armed forces, are conservative Muslims who disagree with his moderate religious policies.
But Musharraf has lost considerable domestic support for a variety of reasons, including his refusal to relinquish his military uniform while in office, his retreat on promises to expand women's and religious rights, and his use of aggressive military tactics to solve problems in volatile border regions.”
So according to her, Pakistan is a Muslim democracy, and civilian rule in this democracy has been “repeatedly interrupted by the army.” For those who dont know the country well, its worth noting that for more than half of Pakistan’s history, the country has been ruled by military dictators. General Pervez Musharraf is the fourth military ruler to seize power from a civilian-led government.
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Other sources reported it differently:
Pakistan's Daily Times said that the outage meant people were without TV or Internet for much of Sunday — although networks remained on air. "Previous coups in Pakistan have been accompanied by an information clampdown for several hours, and this is what many people thought was happening on Sunday," the newspaper reported.
Musharraf, who himself seized power from an elected government in a bloodless coup in 1999, has suffered a series of policy setbacks that have shaken his standing.
He's been accused of backtracking on democratic reform, clumsy handling of an ethnic insurgency in Baluchistan and a disastrous military campaign to wipe out foreign Islamic militants along the Afghan border, now superseded by a controversial peace pact.
___________________
The Boston Globe describing the same incident (Pakistan is no "banana republic," says Musharraf By Kamran Haider September 25, 2006), had a slightly different take:
[..]"Look we aren't, thank God, a banana republic, where such things happen suddenly," said Musharraf, who came to power himself in a bloodless military coup seven years ago.
[..]
Believing the rumors were true, tribesmen in North West Frontier Province fired in the air to celebrate, according to residents of Dera Ismail Khan district and South Waziristan, the semi-autonomous tribal agency where the army launched an operation against al Qaeda and local militants two years ago.
[..]Musharraf has survived several assassination attempts since withdrawing Pakistan's support for the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan in 2001, after the Islamist militia refused to surrender its guest, Osama bin Laden, in the wake of al Qaeda's September 11 attacks on the United States.
[..]While fears of assassination remain, speculation about Musharraf's grip on power is seldom heard openly, as there is no overt political challenge to him.
Leaders of the mainstream opposition parties are living in exile, and while some Islamist leaders talk of toppling the president, most diplomats reckon Musharraf could only be ousted if some fellow generals persuaded him to step aside.
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Dawn (Pakistan)
September 25, 2006 Monday Ramazan 1, 1427
Outage sparks coup rumours
By Ahmad Hassan
ISLAMABAD, Sept 24: A countrywide power outage and reports of President Gen Pervez Musharraf�s unscheduled medical check-up in Texas sparked unusual rumours all over the country about a change of the guard in the capital on Sunday.
Newspaper offices were deluged with calls by concerned people who said they had heard on the grapevine that there had been a putsch in Islamabad following reports that the president had suffered a heart attack during his visit to the United States.
Callers from Quetta said jubilant crowds poured on to the streets and fired into the air to celebrate the government�s removal.
Paying a visit to a local Sunday bazaar, a visibly chagrined Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told a reporter that his question about a change of government did not warrant an answer.
�Why do you ask about something that hasn�t occurred at all?� said the prime minister in an effort to lay the rumour at rest.
The prime minister said that he was actually concerned about the countrywide power breakdown.
�I have spoken to the chairman of the Water and Power Development Authority who assured me that the country�s power supply would be restored by late Sunday night,� he said.
Minister of State for Information Tariq Azeem told a hurriedly-called press conference that a technical fault had sent Wapda�s electricity network reeling.
While there were few takers for the government�s explanation about the reason of the power outage, some believed that an act of sabotage was responsible for the electricity breakdown throughout the country.
Unconvinced cynics also feared that an unreported deterioration in President Musharraf�s health allowed a rumour about the change of government to fast gain ground.
Instead of issuing a direct denial, the government released the latest footage of the president�s visit to the United States, showing Gen Musharraf in fine fettle.
Government officials said people heaved a sigh of relief when they saw that the president was not unwell.
But opposition leaders said that they were certain that reports of the change of government were greeted not by alarm but a sense of relief by the masses.
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Clooney blasts US media
Clooney blasts US media for failure to report on Bush’s policies
Posted on Friday, September 22, 2006 (EST)
Washington, Sept 22: Hollywood activist George Clooney has slammed the US media for neglecting their responsibilities towards the country.
The 'Ocean's Eleven' star, who joined Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel to address the United Nations Security Council about the problems in Darfur last week (Sept. 14), believes that journalists have betrayed the public by not reporting the truth about President George Bush's administration.
"In the year-and-a-half or two years leading up to the war in Iraq, both in print and in broadcast journalism, the media took a pass on its responsibilities. I don't think there's anyone that would deny it - The New York Times certainly hasn't. And if The New York Times and The Washington Post and USA Today are all reneging on their responsibility, then believe me it's going down to the local news level as well. This has really been a poor time in journalism," Contactmusic quoted him as saying.
Clooney also stressed the need for responsible media, and appealed to the journalists to be careful before publishing anything.
"We already had a Congress on the same side as the White House. We needed a Fourth Estate more than ever, to say, 'Let's at least ask questions before we do these things,'" he said.
And, Clooney did not even spare the American public, who he feels contributed to the failure of media in reporting the truth by focusing too much on reality TV shows instead of real news.
"The media's failings reflect on the rest of us too. It took, what, three months after September 11 before reality shows became big again? There's a responsibility to be upheld," he said.
(ANI)
Posted on Friday, September 22, 2006 (EST)
Washington, Sept 22: Hollywood activist George Clooney has slammed the US media for neglecting their responsibilities towards the country.
The 'Ocean's Eleven' star, who joined Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel to address the United Nations Security Council about the problems in Darfur last week (Sept. 14), believes that journalists have betrayed the public by not reporting the truth about President George Bush's administration.
"In the year-and-a-half or two years leading up to the war in Iraq, both in print and in broadcast journalism, the media took a pass on its responsibilities. I don't think there's anyone that would deny it - The New York Times certainly hasn't. And if The New York Times and The Washington Post and USA Today are all reneging on their responsibility, then believe me it's going down to the local news level as well. This has really been a poor time in journalism," Contactmusic quoted him as saying.
Clooney also stressed the need for responsible media, and appealed to the journalists to be careful before publishing anything.
"We already had a Congress on the same side as the White House. We needed a Fourth Estate more than ever, to say, 'Let's at least ask questions before we do these things,'" he said.
And, Clooney did not even spare the American public, who he feels contributed to the failure of media in reporting the truth by focusing too much on reality TV shows instead of real news.
"The media's failings reflect on the rest of us too. It took, what, three months after September 11 before reality shows became big again? There's a responsibility to be upheld," he said.
(ANI)
Chavez coverage
The media – liberal, conservative, whatever uniformly condemned Hugo Chavez’s speech at the UN. The implication in many articles was that this is the rant of a raving madman. In portraying it in this rather simplistic way the Press has once again let the public down by not informing them that the views of Chavez resound loudly with the people of the South.
For a summary of US reporting on Chavez go to Extra, and here is another article on alternet.
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What's Wrong With Calling Bush A Devil?
By Jeff Cohen, AlterNet
Posted on September 23, 2006,
Across the U.S. political and media spectrum, there was wide agreement yesterday: Name-calling and personal attacks are bad for national and global dialogue. Prompting the unity were Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez' comments that President Bush was the devil incarnate, "El Diablo."
Among those exercised (and exorcized) about Chavez' name-calling were some of the loudest name-callers in American media today -- including Rush Limbaugh and other rightwing talk hosts. Limbaugh tried to equate Chavez' remarks with the alleged Bush-bashing that comes from top U.S. Democrats. In case you've forgotten, it was Limbaugh who ridiculed Chelsea Clinton, then 13, as the "White House dog."
It was Limbaugh in 2001 who routinely referred to Democratic leader Tom Daschle, literally, as "El Diablo." Along with "Devil in a Blue Dress" theme music, Limbaugh would carry on at length about how Daschle may well be Satan in soft-spoken disguise. Bellowed Limbaugh in July 2001: "Just yesterday, as Bush winged his way to Europe on a crucial mission to lead our allies into the 21st century...up pops 'El Diablo,' Tom Daschle, and his devilish deviltry, claiming that George Bush is incompetent." (Months later, Limbaugh started describing Daschle more as a traitor than a devil, who'd decided to "align himself with Iran, North Korea and Hussein.")
Also incensed by Chavez was MSNBC host and former GOP Congressman, Joe Scarborough - who last night played a lengthy excerpt of Limbaugh pontificating about the Chavez remarks. Somehow Scarborough couldn't dig up the tapes of Limbaugh declaring that Daschle was the devil.
In my new book Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media, I dissect the hypocrisy of a TV news business that has long catered to hateful rightists like Pat Buchanan, Jerry Falwell and Ann Coulter. In TV land, vicious epithet-hurlers get to define and denounce outnumbered or silenced progressives as the name-callers.
When I worked at MSNBC on Phil Donahue's primetime show in 2002-2003, management often complained that Phil - who never named-called and was one of the most courteous hosts in TV history -- was "badgering" guests. His patriotism was questioned. As the Iraq invasion neared, an internal NBC management memo described Donahue as "a difficult public face for NBC in a time of war." Why? Because he insisted on presenting guests who were "skeptical of the administration's motives."
With Donahue terminated on the eve of war, MSNBC brass turned to hosts like Scarborough and talk radio bigot Michael Savage, known for his declarations that developing countries like Venezuela were "turd world nations"; that Latinos "breed like rabbits"; and that women "should have been denied the vote." In a TV industry bent on placating the far right, Donahue was "a difficult public face for NBC." But Savage was deemed an acceptable face.
Three weeks into the Iraq war, Scarborough was gleeful at boycotts and cancellations aimed at antiwar "elitists" like Janeane Garofalo, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon. As a guest on Scarborough's show, Savage declared that "Hollywood idiots" are "absolutely committing sedition and treason." Responded Scarborough: "These leftist stooges for anti-American causes are always given a free pass."
Let me be clear: Those of us who use facts instead of rant; reason and argument instead of name-calling and personal attacks; evidence instead of intimidation and accusations of disloyalty -- we have the moral authority to tell Hugo Chavez that his comments were out of line.
But the Limbaughs, Hannitys, Scarboroughs and O'Reillys are in no position to point any fingers. Nor are the executives at Disney, GE and News Corp who have made them the loudest voices in American media.
Nor, for that matter, is Team Bush -- whose strategy has been to demonize and intimidate critics and other members of the "reality-based community."
Jeff Cohen is the director of FAIR, the New York-based media watch organization - and co-author (with Norman Solomon) of Wizards of Media Oz: Behind the Curtain of Mainstream News.
For a summary of US reporting on Chavez go to Extra, and here is another article on alternet.
________________
What's Wrong With Calling Bush A Devil?
By Jeff Cohen, AlterNet
Posted on September 23, 2006,
Across the U.S. political and media spectrum, there was wide agreement yesterday: Name-calling and personal attacks are bad for national and global dialogue. Prompting the unity were Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez' comments that President Bush was the devil incarnate, "El Diablo."
Among those exercised (and exorcized) about Chavez' name-calling were some of the loudest name-callers in American media today -- including Rush Limbaugh and other rightwing talk hosts. Limbaugh tried to equate Chavez' remarks with the alleged Bush-bashing that comes from top U.S. Democrats. In case you've forgotten, it was Limbaugh who ridiculed Chelsea Clinton, then 13, as the "White House dog."
It was Limbaugh in 2001 who routinely referred to Democratic leader Tom Daschle, literally, as "El Diablo." Along with "Devil in a Blue Dress" theme music, Limbaugh would carry on at length about how Daschle may well be Satan in soft-spoken disguise. Bellowed Limbaugh in July 2001: "Just yesterday, as Bush winged his way to Europe on a crucial mission to lead our allies into the 21st century...up pops 'El Diablo,' Tom Daschle, and his devilish deviltry, claiming that George Bush is incompetent." (Months later, Limbaugh started describing Daschle more as a traitor than a devil, who'd decided to "align himself with Iran, North Korea and Hussein.")
Also incensed by Chavez was MSNBC host and former GOP Congressman, Joe Scarborough - who last night played a lengthy excerpt of Limbaugh pontificating about the Chavez remarks. Somehow Scarborough couldn't dig up the tapes of Limbaugh declaring that Daschle was the devil.
In my new book Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media, I dissect the hypocrisy of a TV news business that has long catered to hateful rightists like Pat Buchanan, Jerry Falwell and Ann Coulter. In TV land, vicious epithet-hurlers get to define and denounce outnumbered or silenced progressives as the name-callers.
When I worked at MSNBC on Phil Donahue's primetime show in 2002-2003, management often complained that Phil - who never named-called and was one of the most courteous hosts in TV history -- was "badgering" guests. His patriotism was questioned. As the Iraq invasion neared, an internal NBC management memo described Donahue as "a difficult public face for NBC in a time of war." Why? Because he insisted on presenting guests who were "skeptical of the administration's motives."
With Donahue terminated on the eve of war, MSNBC brass turned to hosts like Scarborough and talk radio bigot Michael Savage, known for his declarations that developing countries like Venezuela were "turd world nations"; that Latinos "breed like rabbits"; and that women "should have been denied the vote." In a TV industry bent on placating the far right, Donahue was "a difficult public face for NBC." But Savage was deemed an acceptable face.
Three weeks into the Iraq war, Scarborough was gleeful at boycotts and cancellations aimed at antiwar "elitists" like Janeane Garofalo, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon. As a guest on Scarborough's show, Savage declared that "Hollywood idiots" are "absolutely committing sedition and treason." Responded Scarborough: "These leftist stooges for anti-American causes are always given a free pass."
Let me be clear: Those of us who use facts instead of rant; reason and argument instead of name-calling and personal attacks; evidence instead of intimidation and accusations of disloyalty -- we have the moral authority to tell Hugo Chavez that his comments were out of line.
But the Limbaughs, Hannitys, Scarboroughs and O'Reillys are in no position to point any fingers. Nor are the executives at Disney, GE and News Corp who have made them the loudest voices in American media.
Nor, for that matter, is Team Bush -- whose strategy has been to demonize and intimidate critics and other members of the "reality-based community."
Jeff Cohen is the director of FAIR, the New York-based media watch organization - and co-author (with Norman Solomon) of Wizards of Media Oz: Behind the Curtain of Mainstream News.
Bush foreign policy in South Asia or the reasons for Pamela Constable's bizarre reporting
An excellent article, entitled "Why Pakistan Gets A Nuclear Pass," Lakshmi Chaudhry, highlights the contradictions in the US and particularly the Bush adminstration’s policy towards Paksitan.
some excerpts:
"[..] In the midst of saber-rattling, the Bush administration was quietly doing its own share of appeasing--in the literal, if not historical, sense. In late July, the Institute for Science and International Security issued a report revealing that Pakistan was building a heavy-water reactor capable of producing enough plutonium for 40 to 50 nuclear weapons a year. The response from Frederick Jones, a spokesman for the National Security Council, was surprisingly mild: ''The reactor is expected to be substantially smaller and less capable than reported.''
There also wasn't much hand-wringing on September 6 when Pakistan's military dictatorship announced a peace treaty with militants in North Waziristan, described by one analyst as al-Qaeda's "center of gravity." Vice President Cheney's response: to praise President Pervez Musharraf as "a man who has demonstrated great courage under very difficult political circumstances and has been a great ally for the United States."
---------------------
[..]
In stark contrast to its Middle East policy, the Bush […has…] displayed a willingness to tolerate Islamic extremism that does not directly challenge its interests.
---------------------
In his 2002 State of the Union speech, President George W. Bush pointed to North Korea, Iran and Iraq as part of the now infamous axis of evil: "By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred."
His criteria for membership in this club of rogue states were clear: a dictatorship that possessed or aimed to acquire weapons of mass destruction with documented ties to Islamic terrorist groups. What Bush didn't mention was that he had already entered into a marriage of expedience with Pakistan, the one regime that fully met each of the three requirements (although he did profess his admiration for "the strong leadership of President Musharraf.")
Pakistan bears a striking resemblance to Iran, which Bush has described as a country held hostage by an "elite that is isolating and repressing its people, and denying them basic liberties and human rights." Like Iran, Pakistan is a regime that, in Bush's words, "sponsors terrorists and is actively working to expand its influence in its [neighboring] region." But unlike Iran, this sponsor of Islamic radicalism is already a bona fide nuclear power that has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. What's more, Pakistan has shared its nuclear technology with almost every country on the administration's sworn enemies list: Libya, North Korea, and, yes, Iran.
Before its hasty switch of allegiances in the wake of 9/11, Musharraf's military dictatorship had been one of the Taliban regime's closest allies, and many top-ranking members of the Pakistani Army and the all-powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had close, long-standing connections to al-Qaeda, dating back to the heydays of the anti-Soviet mujaheddin resistance. In fact, al-Qaeda was founded at a 1988 meeting in Peshawar, Pakistan. As a former diplomat told Seymour Hersh in the November 5, 2001, New Yorker, "If you go through the officer list, almost all of the I.S.I. regulars would say, of the Taliban, 'They are my boys.' "
[…]
Far from moving toward democracy, Musharraf is positioning himself to hold yet another round of rigged elections next year in order to stay in power until 2012. And while he may be no Saddam Hussein, Amnesty International has documented a variety of human rights abuses, including the torture and extra-judicial executions of insurgents by the Pakistani army in the ongoing civil war in Baluchistan.
As for ongoing connections with Islamic extremism, unlike the Baathist regime in Iraq or Hosni Mubarak's dictatorship in Egypt, the Pakistani dictators have traditionally used Islamic ideology to secure their power, and Musharraf continues that tradition to this day. According to Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, author of Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, "Gen. Musharraf and the military hierarchy are neither extremist nor remotely fundamentalist. But they have every intention of using the fundamentalists as political allies against national political parties who question the need for military rule."
In practice, this has meant not only encouraging militant jihadis to fight a proxy war against India in Kashmir, but also tolerating the pro-Taliban activities of the Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam (JUI) in Baluchistan. "[The Taliban] have been able to set up a major logistics hub, training camps, carry out fundraising and have been free to recruit fighters from madrassas and refugee camps," wrote Rashid in a June 2 BBC column. "Al-Qaeda has helped the Taliban reorganize and forge alliances with other Afghan and Central Asian rebel groups."
---------------------
In fact, very little is transparent about the nature of the relationship between the United States and Pakistan, or the kind of agreements it entails. As Levi points out, most of what is publicly reported is based more on speculation than fact. The secrecy is both worrying and ironic given Bush's perspective on Iran: "A non-transparent society that is the world's premier state sponsor of terror cannot be allowed to possess the world's most dangerous weapons," he says.
More important, as Abbas argues, the Bush administration is investing heavily in a dictator who is increasingly unable to rein in the very extremists he needs to secure his political future. Not only have groups like the JUI and the jihadis in Kashmir become increasingly independent, but the regime no longer has control over critical regions such as Waziristan and Baluchistan. "This is a very dangerous strategy," Abbas says. "There is no doubt there is going to be blowback."
[…]
But to accuse George Bush of hypocrisy is to miss the significance of the distinction his administration makes between the two regions. Unlike its heavy-handed Middle East policy, the Bush strategy in South Asia is a tightrope act that balances competing foreign policy objectives: prevent Islamic extremists from gaining control of Pakistan and, more important, its nuclear arsenal; bolster India as a counter-force to Chinese power; and use U.S. influence with Pakistan as a bargaining chip with India.
_______________________________________________________________
Why Pakistan Gets A Nuclear Pass
The Bush administration's pragmatic policy toward Pakistan suggests its foreign policy is less ideological than imperial.
By Lakshmi Chaudhry
September 22, 2006
In these Times
Why wait?" asked William Kristol in a July 24 Weekly Standard op-ed calling for a preemptive military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. "Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later." By August, the usual array of neoconservative pundits were chanting the "Why wait?" mantra, as their supporters within the administration, most notably Donald Rumsfeld, issued dire warnings against "appeasement."
Yet in the midst of saber-rattling, the Bush administration was quietly doing its own share of appeasing--in the literal, if not historical, sense. In late July, the Institute for Science and International Security issued a report revealing that Pakistan was building a heavy-water reactor capable of producing enough plutonium for 40 to 50 nuclear weapons a year. The response from Frederick Jones, a spokesman for the National Security Council, was surprisingly mild: ''The reactor is expected to be substantially smaller and less capable than reported.''
There also wasn't much hand-wringing on September 6 when Pakistan's military dictatorship announced a peace treaty with militants in North Waziristan, described by one analyst as al-Qaeda's "center of gravity." Vice President Cheney's response: to praise President Pervez Musharraf as "a man who has demonstrated great courage under very difficult political circumstances and has been a great ally for the United States."
---------------------
Critics of the Bush foreign policy have accused the administration of undertaking a global crusade against radical Islam. Joseph Cirincione, senior vice president for national security and international policy at the Center for American Progress, told NPR on August 30 that the Bush administration lumps all groups together in terms of this "Islamic fundamentalist, Islamo-fascist mush. ... That al-Qaeda is Hamas is Iran is al-Qaeda is Syria. They're all one enemy and we have to fight them all. Nonsense!" Their response to this undifferentiated, all-pervasive peril, he says, is a hyper-aggressive policy of preemptive regime change, "what [journalist] Ron Suskind calls 'The one percent doctrine'--if there's a one percent chance that Iran could get the bomb, give it to a terrorist group who could deliver it to New York, shouldn't we overthrow the regime?"
Suskind's book, The One Percent Doctrine, takes its title from Vice President Dick Cheney's response in November 2001 to intelligence that revealed meetings between top-ranking Pakistani nuclear experts and Osama bin Laden. At the end of the briefing, Cheney declared, "If there's a one percent chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response." The irony is that the exception to this doctrine is the very nation that inspired its creation.
In stark contrast to its Middle East policy, the Bush administration's strategy with Pakistan has prioritized pragmatism over ideology, preferred diplomatic persuasion to military aggression and, most strikingly, displayed a willingness to tolerate Islamic extremism that does not directly challenge its interests. Pakistan hints at both a different, realpolitik side to the Bush foreign policy and a disconnect between the administration's moral and ideological rhetoric and its underlying goals.
---------------------
In his 2002 State of the Union speech, President George W. Bush pointed to North Korea, Iran and Iraq as part of the now infamous axis of evil: "By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred."
His criteria for membership in this club of rogue states were clear: a dictatorship that possessed or aimed to acquire weapons of mass destruction with documented ties to Islamic terrorist groups. What Bush didn't mention was that he had already entered into a marriage of expedience with Pakistan, the one regime that fully met each of the three requirements (although he did profess his admiration for "the strong leadership of President Musharraf.")
Pakistan bears a striking resemblance to Iran, which Bush has described as a country held hostage by an "elite that is isolating and repressing its people, and denying them basic liberties and human rights." Like Iran, Pakistan is a regime that, in Bush's words, "sponsors terrorists and is actively working to expand its influence in its [neighboring] region." But unlike Iran, this sponsor of Islamic radicalism is already a bona fide nuclear power that has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. What's more, Pakistan has shared its nuclear technology with almost every country on the administration's sworn enemies list: Libya, North Korea, and, yes, Iran.
Before its hasty switch of allegiances in the wake of 9/11, Musharraf's military dictatorship had been one of the Taliban regime's closest allies, and many top-ranking members of the Pakistani Army and the all-powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had close, long-standing connections to al-Qaeda, dating back to the heydays of the anti-Soviet mujaheddin resistance. In fact, al-Qaeda was founded at a 1988 meeting in Peshawar, Pakistan. As a former diplomat told Seymour Hersh in the November 5, 2001, New Yorker, "If you go through the officer list, almost all of the I.S.I. regulars would say, of the Taliban, 'They are my boys.' "
But the Bush administration needed Pakistan's assistance to wage the war against Afghanistan, a country it knew practically nothing about. The result: a 180-degree reversal in U.S. policy, which in 1998, following Pakistan's nuclear test, had included economic sanctions and the withdrawal of aid. "The U.S.-Pakistan relationship was fundamentally transformed within a very short period of time under a large amount of pressure after September 11," says Council for Foreign Relations analyst Michael Levi.
If the U.S. rationale for its change of heart was less than ideal, so was Pakistan's motive for joining the so-called war on terror, as Musharraf made clear in an September 23 interview with "60 Minutes": "The intelligence director told me that (then deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage) said, 'Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age.' "
p>Five years after the 9/11 attacks, the U.S.-Pakistan relationship remains unchanged, even as Pakistan continues to flunk the Bush administration's own sniff test. Far from moving toward democracy, Musharraf is positioning himself to hold yet another round of rigged elections next year in order to stay in power until 2012. And while he may be no Saddam Hussein, Amnesty International has documented a variety of human rights abuses, including the torture and extra-judicial executions of insurgents by the Pakistani army in the ongoing civil war in Baluchistan.
As for ongoing connections with Islamic extremism, unlike the Baathist regime in Iraq or Hosni Mubarak's dictatorship in Egypt, the Pakistani dictators have traditionally used Islamic ideology to secure their power, and Musharraf continues that tradition to this day. According to Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, author of Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, "Gen. Musharraf and the military hierarchy are neither extremist nor remotely fundamentalist. But they have every intention of using the fundamentalists as political allies against national political parties who question the need for military rule."
In practice, this has meant not only encouraging militant jihadis to fight a proxy war against India in Kashmir, but also tolerating the pro-Taliban activities of the Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam (JUI) in Baluchistan. "[The Taliban] have been able to set up a major logistics hub, training camps, carry out fundraising and have been free to recruit fighters from madrassas and refugee camps," wrote Rashid in a June 2 BBC column. "Al-Qaeda has helped the Taliban reorganize and forge alliances with other Afghan and Central Asian rebel groups."
Though the Bush administration has leaned on Musharraf behind the scenes, it's heaped extravagant praise on him in public, especially for his role in both foiling this summer's al-Qaeda plot to blow up planes using liquid explosives and in arresting the terrorists involved in the London subway bombings in 2005. Yet the arrests also point to a less appetizing reality that Pakistan remains, in the words of Rashid, "the global center for terrorism and for the remnants of al-Qaeda."
Hassan Abbas, author of Pakistan's Drift Into Extremism and a research fellow at Harvard University, says Musharraf has made an effort to crack down on terrorism in areas that don't directly undermine his political base, such as the military actions against al-Qaeda in Waziristan, and Pakistan has arrested some of al-Qaeda's prominent leaders, who "may not be number one or two, but certainly people who are up there in the hierarchy." But even these efforts are in jeopardy now that Musharraf has ended hostilities in Waziristan--largely to placate the all-powerful Pakistani army, which has lost 350 soldiers in this unpopular campaign--and given permission to foreign militants to remain there in return for a vague promise to end incursions into Afghanistan.
The Bush administration's greatest success thus far has come in the area of nonproliferation. Despite Musharraf's refusal to turn over A. Q. Khan--who was arrested two years ago for supplying nuclear materials and know-how to Libya, Iran and North Korea--analysts like Levi say that the United States has been "fairly successful" in securing the Pakistani nuclear program. But the details of the arrangement remain secret. "I think the U.S.•Pakistan cooperation in nuclear related issues is much closer than what is publicly known--primarily due to the U.S. concerns about the safety of Pakistani nuclear assets," Abbas says. "This aspect is not discussed openly because [such] cooperation will be interpreted in Pakistan as compromising [their sovereignty]."
---------------------
In fact, very little is transparent about the nature of the relationship between the United States and Pakistan, or the kind of agreements it entails. As Levi points out, most of what is publicly reported is based more on speculation than fact. The secrecy is both worrying and ironic given Bush's perspective on Iran: "A non-transparent society that is the world's premier state sponsor of terror cannot be allowed to possess the world's most dangerous weapons," he says.
More important, as Abbas argues, the Bush administration is investing heavily in a dictator who is increasingly unable to rein in the very extremists he needs to secure his political future. Not only have groups like the JUI and the jihadis in Kashmir become increasingly independent, but the regime no longer has control over critical regions such as Waziristan and Baluchistan. "This is a very dangerous strategy," Abbas says. "There is no doubt there is going to be blowback."
While the Bush White House's Pakistan policy is undoubtedly flawed, it is also strikingly out of character. An administration best known for its ideological rigidity has been surprisingly pragmatic and subtle in its dealings with Islamabad. The same George W. Bush who is unable to differentiate between Hamas or Hezbollah in the Middle East has been willing in Pakistan to narrowly define terrorism to exclude groups who do not directly threaten U.S. interests--even though many of them have close links to al-Qaeda.
The Bush administration has also been far more willing to deal with the reality of Pakistan's nuclear bomb than Iran's desire to build one in the distant future. "Pakistan already has the bomb. You can't do anything about that," Levi says. "Once the horse has fled, there are a lot more useful things you can do other than shut the barn door."
---------------------
Critics of the Bush administration's confrontation with Iran have often pointed to Pakistan as an example of its double standard. As Bill Maher told Larry King, "And could we at least have a debate on whether this is an impossibility, that Iran be allowed the nuclear weapon before we invade them? I mean, Pakistan is a Muslim country full of people who want to kill us. And they have a nuclear bomb. Somehow that's OK."
But to accuse George Bush of hypocrisy is to miss the significance of the distinction his administration makes between the two regions. Unlike its heavy-handed Middle East policy, the Bush strategy in South Asia is a tightrope act that balances competing foreign policy objectives: prevent Islamic extremists from gaining control of Pakistan and, more important, its nuclear arsenal; bolster India as a counter-force to Chinese power; and use U.S. influence with Pakistan as a bargaining chip with India.
This policy tells us that the administration is willing to use the kind of diplomatic engagement it pretends to disdain to further its goals, which--as U.S. concerns about India and China suggest--are not limited to battling terrorism. What's more, it suggests that the reasons for the Bush administration's military adventurism in the Middle East have little to do with a morally righteous crusade against Islamic terrorists.
In the September/October, 2002, issue of Foreign Affairs, John Ikenberry, the director of the Princeton Project on National Security, argued that those looking for the real motivation for the so-called "war on terror" should look to a 1992 "Defense Policy Guidance" draft penned by Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis Libby. In it, they laid out a "grand strategy" to promote and maintain U.S. global dominance based on military preemption, unilateralism and, most importantly, control of the Middle East: "In the Middle East and Southwest Asia, our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the region and preserve U.S. and Western access to the region's oil."
As Michael Klare, author of Blood and Oil, told Mother Jones, in this "grand strategy," oil is important not so much as fuel but as the source of global power: "Control over the Persian Gulf translates into control over Europe, Japan and China. It's having our hand on the spigot."
Control over the Middle East in turn requires eliminating any regime hostile to the United States and its closest ally, Israel. Iran is the enemy not because it is led by Islamist supporters of terrorism with plans to develop a nuclear bomb, but because it is a significant regional power opposed to the Bush administration's plan to "restructure" the Middle East to suit its global ambitions. In contrast, not only has Pakistan allied itself entirely with the Bush administration's war on terror, but Musharraf is now moving toward reinstating diplomatic ties with Israel.
The Bush double standard reveals a foreign policy that is less ideological than imperial. In this, the administration is different from its predecessors only by degrees of its ambition and ruthlessness. As Cirincione reminded NPR listeners, "The Shah wanted to build 20 nuclear reactors--that's what the government says they want to build now--we OK'd it. In fact, we wanted to sell them those reactors. Even when the CIA discovered in the '70s that the Shah was secretly working on a nuclear program, we still OK'd Iran's plans then to open a uranium enrichment facility and a plutonium reprocessing facility. We still went ahead because we said 'It's OK because he's our guy.'"
If the Bush administration succeeds in its outlandish plans for "regime change" in Iran, it may well be every bit as lenient with our new guy in Tehran. Just ask Pervez Musharraf.
Lakshmi Chaudhry has been a reporter and an editor for independent publications for more than six years, and is a senior editor at In These Times, where she covers the cross-section of culture and politics.
some excerpts:
"[..] In the midst of saber-rattling, the Bush administration was quietly doing its own share of appeasing--in the literal, if not historical, sense. In late July, the Institute for Science and International Security issued a report revealing that Pakistan was building a heavy-water reactor capable of producing enough plutonium for 40 to 50 nuclear weapons a year. The response from Frederick Jones, a spokesman for the National Security Council, was surprisingly mild: ''The reactor is expected to be substantially smaller and less capable than reported.''
There also wasn't much hand-wringing on September 6 when Pakistan's military dictatorship announced a peace treaty with militants in North Waziristan, described by one analyst as al-Qaeda's "center of gravity." Vice President Cheney's response: to praise President Pervez Musharraf as "a man who has demonstrated great courage under very difficult political circumstances and has been a great ally for the United States."
---------------------
[..]
In stark contrast to its Middle East policy, the Bush […has…] displayed a willingness to tolerate Islamic extremism that does not directly challenge its interests.
---------------------
In his 2002 State of the Union speech, President George W. Bush pointed to North Korea, Iran and Iraq as part of the now infamous axis of evil: "By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred."
His criteria for membership in this club of rogue states were clear: a dictatorship that possessed or aimed to acquire weapons of mass destruction with documented ties to Islamic terrorist groups. What Bush didn't mention was that he had already entered into a marriage of expedience with Pakistan, the one regime that fully met each of the three requirements (although he did profess his admiration for "the strong leadership of President Musharraf.")
Pakistan bears a striking resemblance to Iran, which Bush has described as a country held hostage by an "elite that is isolating and repressing its people, and denying them basic liberties and human rights." Like Iran, Pakistan is a regime that, in Bush's words, "sponsors terrorists and is actively working to expand its influence in its [neighboring] region." But unlike Iran, this sponsor of Islamic radicalism is already a bona fide nuclear power that has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. What's more, Pakistan has shared its nuclear technology with almost every country on the administration's sworn enemies list: Libya, North Korea, and, yes, Iran.
Before its hasty switch of allegiances in the wake of 9/11, Musharraf's military dictatorship had been one of the Taliban regime's closest allies, and many top-ranking members of the Pakistani Army and the all-powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had close, long-standing connections to al-Qaeda, dating back to the heydays of the anti-Soviet mujaheddin resistance. In fact, al-Qaeda was founded at a 1988 meeting in Peshawar, Pakistan. As a former diplomat told Seymour Hersh in the November 5, 2001, New Yorker, "If you go through the officer list, almost all of the I.S.I. regulars would say, of the Taliban, 'They are my boys.' "
[…]
Far from moving toward democracy, Musharraf is positioning himself to hold yet another round of rigged elections next year in order to stay in power until 2012. And while he may be no Saddam Hussein, Amnesty International has documented a variety of human rights abuses, including the torture and extra-judicial executions of insurgents by the Pakistani army in the ongoing civil war in Baluchistan.
As for ongoing connections with Islamic extremism, unlike the Baathist regime in Iraq or Hosni Mubarak's dictatorship in Egypt, the Pakistani dictators have traditionally used Islamic ideology to secure their power, and Musharraf continues that tradition to this day. According to Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, author of Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, "Gen. Musharraf and the military hierarchy are neither extremist nor remotely fundamentalist. But they have every intention of using the fundamentalists as political allies against national political parties who question the need for military rule."
In practice, this has meant not only encouraging militant jihadis to fight a proxy war against India in Kashmir, but also tolerating the pro-Taliban activities of the Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam (JUI) in Baluchistan. "[The Taliban] have been able to set up a major logistics hub, training camps, carry out fundraising and have been free to recruit fighters from madrassas and refugee camps," wrote Rashid in a June 2 BBC column. "Al-Qaeda has helped the Taliban reorganize and forge alliances with other Afghan and Central Asian rebel groups."
---------------------
In fact, very little is transparent about the nature of the relationship between the United States and Pakistan, or the kind of agreements it entails. As Levi points out, most of what is publicly reported is based more on speculation than fact. The secrecy is both worrying and ironic given Bush's perspective on Iran: "A non-transparent society that is the world's premier state sponsor of terror cannot be allowed to possess the world's most dangerous weapons," he says.
More important, as Abbas argues, the Bush administration is investing heavily in a dictator who is increasingly unable to rein in the very extremists he needs to secure his political future. Not only have groups like the JUI and the jihadis in Kashmir become increasingly independent, but the regime no longer has control over critical regions such as Waziristan and Baluchistan. "This is a very dangerous strategy," Abbas says. "There is no doubt there is going to be blowback."
[…]
But to accuse George Bush of hypocrisy is to miss the significance of the distinction his administration makes between the two regions. Unlike its heavy-handed Middle East policy, the Bush strategy in South Asia is a tightrope act that balances competing foreign policy objectives: prevent Islamic extremists from gaining control of Pakistan and, more important, its nuclear arsenal; bolster India as a counter-force to Chinese power; and use U.S. influence with Pakistan as a bargaining chip with India.
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Why Pakistan Gets A Nuclear Pass
The Bush administration's pragmatic policy toward Pakistan suggests its foreign policy is less ideological than imperial.
By Lakshmi Chaudhry
September 22, 2006
In these Times
Why wait?" asked William Kristol in a July 24 Weekly Standard op-ed calling for a preemptive military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. "Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later." By August, the usual array of neoconservative pundits were chanting the "Why wait?" mantra, as their supporters within the administration, most notably Donald Rumsfeld, issued dire warnings against "appeasement."
Yet in the midst of saber-rattling, the Bush administration was quietly doing its own share of appeasing--in the literal, if not historical, sense. In late July, the Institute for Science and International Security issued a report revealing that Pakistan was building a heavy-water reactor capable of producing enough plutonium for 40 to 50 nuclear weapons a year. The response from Frederick Jones, a spokesman for the National Security Council, was surprisingly mild: ''The reactor is expected to be substantially smaller and less capable than reported.''
There also wasn't much hand-wringing on September 6 when Pakistan's military dictatorship announced a peace treaty with militants in North Waziristan, described by one analyst as al-Qaeda's "center of gravity." Vice President Cheney's response: to praise President Pervez Musharraf as "a man who has demonstrated great courage under very difficult political circumstances and has been a great ally for the United States."
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Critics of the Bush foreign policy have accused the administration of undertaking a global crusade against radical Islam. Joseph Cirincione, senior vice president for national security and international policy at the Center for American Progress, told NPR on August 30 that the Bush administration lumps all groups together in terms of this "Islamic fundamentalist, Islamo-fascist mush. ... That al-Qaeda is Hamas is Iran is al-Qaeda is Syria. They're all one enemy and we have to fight them all. Nonsense!" Their response to this undifferentiated, all-pervasive peril, he says, is a hyper-aggressive policy of preemptive regime change, "what [journalist] Ron Suskind calls 'The one percent doctrine'--if there's a one percent chance that Iran could get the bomb, give it to a terrorist group who could deliver it to New York, shouldn't we overthrow the regime?"
Suskind's book, The One Percent Doctrine, takes its title from Vice President Dick Cheney's response in November 2001 to intelligence that revealed meetings between top-ranking Pakistani nuclear experts and Osama bin Laden. At the end of the briefing, Cheney declared, "If there's a one percent chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response." The irony is that the exception to this doctrine is the very nation that inspired its creation.
In stark contrast to its Middle East policy, the Bush administration's strategy with Pakistan has prioritized pragmatism over ideology, preferred diplomatic persuasion to military aggression and, most strikingly, displayed a willingness to tolerate Islamic extremism that does not directly challenge its interests. Pakistan hints at both a different, realpolitik side to the Bush foreign policy and a disconnect between the administration's moral and ideological rhetoric and its underlying goals.
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In his 2002 State of the Union speech, President George W. Bush pointed to North Korea, Iran and Iraq as part of the now infamous axis of evil: "By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred."
His criteria for membership in this club of rogue states were clear: a dictatorship that possessed or aimed to acquire weapons of mass destruction with documented ties to Islamic terrorist groups. What Bush didn't mention was that he had already entered into a marriage of expedience with Pakistan, the one regime that fully met each of the three requirements (although he did profess his admiration for "the strong leadership of President Musharraf.")
Pakistan bears a striking resemblance to Iran, which Bush has described as a country held hostage by an "elite that is isolating and repressing its people, and denying them basic liberties and human rights." Like Iran, Pakistan is a regime that, in Bush's words, "sponsors terrorists and is actively working to expand its influence in its [neighboring] region." But unlike Iran, this sponsor of Islamic radicalism is already a bona fide nuclear power that has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. What's more, Pakistan has shared its nuclear technology with almost every country on the administration's sworn enemies list: Libya, North Korea, and, yes, Iran.
Before its hasty switch of allegiances in the wake of 9/11, Musharraf's military dictatorship had been one of the Taliban regime's closest allies, and many top-ranking members of the Pakistani Army and the all-powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had close, long-standing connections to al-Qaeda, dating back to the heydays of the anti-Soviet mujaheddin resistance. In fact, al-Qaeda was founded at a 1988 meeting in Peshawar, Pakistan. As a former diplomat told Seymour Hersh in the November 5, 2001, New Yorker, "If you go through the officer list, almost all of the I.S.I. regulars would say, of the Taliban, 'They are my boys.' "
But the Bush administration needed Pakistan's assistance to wage the war against Afghanistan, a country it knew practically nothing about. The result: a 180-degree reversal in U.S. policy, which in 1998, following Pakistan's nuclear test, had included economic sanctions and the withdrawal of aid. "The U.S.-Pakistan relationship was fundamentally transformed within a very short period of time under a large amount of pressure after September 11," says Council for Foreign Relations analyst Michael Levi.
If the U.S. rationale for its change of heart was less than ideal, so was Pakistan's motive for joining the so-called war on terror, as Musharraf made clear in an September 23 interview with "60 Minutes": "The intelligence director told me that (then deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage) said, 'Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age.' "
p>Five years after the 9/11 attacks, the U.S.-Pakistan relationship remains unchanged, even as Pakistan continues to flunk the Bush administration's own sniff test. Far from moving toward democracy, Musharraf is positioning himself to hold yet another round of rigged elections next year in order to stay in power until 2012. And while he may be no Saddam Hussein, Amnesty International has documented a variety of human rights abuses, including the torture and extra-judicial executions of insurgents by the Pakistani army in the ongoing civil war in Baluchistan.
As for ongoing connections with Islamic extremism, unlike the Baathist regime in Iraq or Hosni Mubarak's dictatorship in Egypt, the Pakistani dictators have traditionally used Islamic ideology to secure their power, and Musharraf continues that tradition to this day. According to Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, author of Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, "Gen. Musharraf and the military hierarchy are neither extremist nor remotely fundamentalist. But they have every intention of using the fundamentalists as political allies against national political parties who question the need for military rule."
In practice, this has meant not only encouraging militant jihadis to fight a proxy war against India in Kashmir, but also tolerating the pro-Taliban activities of the Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam (JUI) in Baluchistan. "[The Taliban] have been able to set up a major logistics hub, training camps, carry out fundraising and have been free to recruit fighters from madrassas and refugee camps," wrote Rashid in a June 2 BBC column. "Al-Qaeda has helped the Taliban reorganize and forge alliances with other Afghan and Central Asian rebel groups."
Though the Bush administration has leaned on Musharraf behind the scenes, it's heaped extravagant praise on him in public, especially for his role in both foiling this summer's al-Qaeda plot to blow up planes using liquid explosives and in arresting the terrorists involved in the London subway bombings in 2005. Yet the arrests also point to a less appetizing reality that Pakistan remains, in the words of Rashid, "the global center for terrorism and for the remnants of al-Qaeda."
Hassan Abbas, author of Pakistan's Drift Into Extremism and a research fellow at Harvard University, says Musharraf has made an effort to crack down on terrorism in areas that don't directly undermine his political base, such as the military actions against al-Qaeda in Waziristan, and Pakistan has arrested some of al-Qaeda's prominent leaders, who "may not be number one or two, but certainly people who are up there in the hierarchy." But even these efforts are in jeopardy now that Musharraf has ended hostilities in Waziristan--largely to placate the all-powerful Pakistani army, which has lost 350 soldiers in this unpopular campaign--and given permission to foreign militants to remain there in return for a vague promise to end incursions into Afghanistan.
The Bush administration's greatest success thus far has come in the area of nonproliferation. Despite Musharraf's refusal to turn over A. Q. Khan--who was arrested two years ago for supplying nuclear materials and know-how to Libya, Iran and North Korea--analysts like Levi say that the United States has been "fairly successful" in securing the Pakistani nuclear program. But the details of the arrangement remain secret. "I think the U.S.•Pakistan cooperation in nuclear related issues is much closer than what is publicly known--primarily due to the U.S. concerns about the safety of Pakistani nuclear assets," Abbas says. "This aspect is not discussed openly because [such] cooperation will be interpreted in Pakistan as compromising [their sovereignty]."
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In fact, very little is transparent about the nature of the relationship between the United States and Pakistan, or the kind of agreements it entails. As Levi points out, most of what is publicly reported is based more on speculation than fact. The secrecy is both worrying and ironic given Bush's perspective on Iran: "A non-transparent society that is the world's premier state sponsor of terror cannot be allowed to possess the world's most dangerous weapons," he says.
More important, as Abbas argues, the Bush administration is investing heavily in a dictator who is increasingly unable to rein in the very extremists he needs to secure his political future. Not only have groups like the JUI and the jihadis in Kashmir become increasingly independent, but the regime no longer has control over critical regions such as Waziristan and Baluchistan. "This is a very dangerous strategy," Abbas says. "There is no doubt there is going to be blowback."
While the Bush White House's Pakistan policy is undoubtedly flawed, it is also strikingly out of character. An administration best known for its ideological rigidity has been surprisingly pragmatic and subtle in its dealings with Islamabad. The same George W. Bush who is unable to differentiate between Hamas or Hezbollah in the Middle East has been willing in Pakistan to narrowly define terrorism to exclude groups who do not directly threaten U.S. interests--even though many of them have close links to al-Qaeda.
The Bush administration has also been far more willing to deal with the reality of Pakistan's nuclear bomb than Iran's desire to build one in the distant future. "Pakistan already has the bomb. You can't do anything about that," Levi says. "Once the horse has fled, there are a lot more useful things you can do other than shut the barn door."
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Critics of the Bush administration's confrontation with Iran have often pointed to Pakistan as an example of its double standard. As Bill Maher told Larry King, "And could we at least have a debate on whether this is an impossibility, that Iran be allowed the nuclear weapon before we invade them? I mean, Pakistan is a Muslim country full of people who want to kill us. And they have a nuclear bomb. Somehow that's OK."
But to accuse George Bush of hypocrisy is to miss the significance of the distinction his administration makes between the two regions. Unlike its heavy-handed Middle East policy, the Bush strategy in South Asia is a tightrope act that balances competing foreign policy objectives: prevent Islamic extremists from gaining control of Pakistan and, more important, its nuclear arsenal; bolster India as a counter-force to Chinese power; and use U.S. influence with Pakistan as a bargaining chip with India.
This policy tells us that the administration is willing to use the kind of diplomatic engagement it pretends to disdain to further its goals, which--as U.S. concerns about India and China suggest--are not limited to battling terrorism. What's more, it suggests that the reasons for the Bush administration's military adventurism in the Middle East have little to do with a morally righteous crusade against Islamic terrorists.
In the September/October, 2002, issue of Foreign Affairs, John Ikenberry, the director of the Princeton Project on National Security, argued that those looking for the real motivation for the so-called "war on terror" should look to a 1992 "Defense Policy Guidance" draft penned by Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis Libby. In it, they laid out a "grand strategy" to promote and maintain U.S. global dominance based on military preemption, unilateralism and, most importantly, control of the Middle East: "In the Middle East and Southwest Asia, our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the region and preserve U.S. and Western access to the region's oil."
As Michael Klare, author of Blood and Oil, told Mother Jones, in this "grand strategy," oil is important not so much as fuel but as the source of global power: "Control over the Persian Gulf translates into control over Europe, Japan and China. It's having our hand on the spigot."
Control over the Middle East in turn requires eliminating any regime hostile to the United States and its closest ally, Israel. Iran is the enemy not because it is led by Islamist supporters of terrorism with plans to develop a nuclear bomb, but because it is a significant regional power opposed to the Bush administration's plan to "restructure" the Middle East to suit its global ambitions. In contrast, not only has Pakistan allied itself entirely with the Bush administration's war on terror, but Musharraf is now moving toward reinstating diplomatic ties with Israel.
The Bush double standard reveals a foreign policy that is less ideological than imperial. In this, the administration is different from its predecessors only by degrees of its ambition and ruthlessness. As Cirincione reminded NPR listeners, "The Shah wanted to build 20 nuclear reactors--that's what the government says they want to build now--we OK'd it. In fact, we wanted to sell them those reactors. Even when the CIA discovered in the '70s that the Shah was secretly working on a nuclear program, we still OK'd Iran's plans then to open a uranium enrichment facility and a plutonium reprocessing facility. We still went ahead because we said 'It's OK because he's our guy.'"
If the Bush administration succeeds in its outlandish plans for "regime change" in Iran, it may well be every bit as lenient with our new guy in Tehran. Just ask Pervez Musharraf.
Lakshmi Chaudhry has been a reporter and an editor for independent publications for more than six years, and is a senior editor at In These Times, where she covers the cross-section of culture and politics.
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