In "Free Baluchistan," Selig Harrison explicitly calls for the United States to "aid the Baluch insurgents fighting for independence from Pakistan in the face of growing ISI repression."
When Rudyard Kipling called empire the white man's burden, he was voicing the ideological idiom of that particular point in time. However, fairly recently, General Musharraf chose to share that burden, owning the ‘war on terror' with ruinous consequences. Dumped by the United States, his legacy endures and flourishes with the NRO brigand he left behind that prides itself on being a coalition partner.
A coalition is based on consultation and compromise. But ours is based more on betrayal and on undermining an ally by treating it like a puppet. Given the aftermath of Charlie Wilson's War there were many who strongly advocated the hypocrisy of the United States and the inherent dangers in fighting their war. They were branded as Taliban loving pen-pushers.
The Telegraph has reported how President Obama got Russia to sign the START treaty to limit nuclear arms. It reveals that the US secretly gave Moscow serial numbers of each US-provided Trident missile in the British ballistic missile inventory. This enabled Russia to confirm the size of the British nuclear arsenal.
A 2009 US cable released by WikiLeaks described Libya as a "critical ally in US counterterrorism efforts." Qaddafi is a pariah today, his sons and grandchildren are being murdered as the United States aids and arms Libyan ‘rebels'. We too chose to become a critical ally at the cost of our sovereignty and survival. The frightening lack of logic in our decisions has led the country to ignominy and disaster. The ‘dollar' lining is only for those who ‘dealt' their way to power.
Lord Cromer famously worded the British Empire's influence on Egypt when he said "we do not govern Egypt; we govern the governors of Egypt." Similarly, the United States is governing the governors of Pakistan today.
Selig Harrison is Director Asia Programme at the Centre for International Policy and a senior scholar of the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars. Having worked for many years in this region he is acknowledged as a South East Asian specialist. He is frequently invited to testify as an expert witness before congressional committees. He also lectures at the United States National Defence University, the National War College and the State Department's Foreign Service Institute. He is best known for prophesying foreign policy crises. He predicted the Pak-India 1965 war 18 months before it happened. A year before the Russians invaded Afghanistan he wrote about the same in the Foreign Policy journal. He was also one of the earliest to foresee the Soviet Union withdrawal from Afghanistan. His many predictions and pieces of advice have found willing ears at the highest echelons in subsequent US administrations.
In "Free Baluchistan," Selig Harrison explicitly calls for the United States to "aid the Baluch insurgents fighting for independence from Pakistan in the face of growing ISI repression." He also explains the meddling merits by stating, "Pakistan has given China a base at Gwadar in the heart of Baluch territory. So an independent Baluchistan would serve US strategic interests in addition to the immediate goal of countering Islamist forces." He also specifically calls for carving off Baluchistan to gain a permanent foothold in the region to counter Iran and an emerging China. He also sees it as a tool of thwarting Islamabad-Beijing relations.
A 2005 report of the US National Intelligence Council and the CIA forecast a "Yugoslav-like fate for Pakistan in a decade, with the country rive by bloodshed and inter-provincial rivalries". According to the NIC-CIA, Pakistan is slated to become a "failed state by 2015, as it would be affected by civil war and struggle for control of its nuclear weapons". The arrest of Raymond Davis, his contacts with Lashkar-e-Jhangavi and the TTP, and the subsequent ISI-CIA standoff appear to have accelerated this foul plan. To achieve this end, the often pleaded but routinely dismissed nexus between the CIA, RAW, RAM (Afghanistan's Riyast-i-Amniyat-i-Milli) and Mossad is in over-drive mode. Our complacency of a pliant vassal state helps the evolving US agenda, which favours disruption and disarray in the very foundations of Pakistan.
The above Nostradamic prophecies gain strength given the lack of cohesion amongst our own rank and file. There is a total disconnect between the political leadership and military, the executive and the judiciary and most importantly, the people and the state.
The premise that the intelligence agencies and defence forces can preempt each and every attack successfully is irrational. However, the PNS Mehran debacle did happen on the heels of the Abbottabad incursion. It emboldens those who theorise our status as a vulnerable nuclear state. It also serves as a body blow with six people managing to decapitate our navy's total surveillance capabilities. The Chief of Naval Staff's failure to admit a security lapse is, to say the least, unpalatable. Accepting an error is the first step towards reform; after all our defence forces are the instruments of our sovereignty.
The American brass has come visiting again. In a strange coincidence Ustad Ahmed Farooq has surfaced as Al-Qaeda's official for Pakistan and a Mohmand faction of the TTP has claimed it will continue fighting even if the Americans leave Afghanistan. The props are in place, the gory drama continues. The known duplicity of the political elite too stands confirmed by the barrage of leaked US cables.
These trying times call for the leadership to form a unified national policy to counter the relentless onslaught. Those who thrive on the status-quo propagate the need for fighting a perpetual war to merit an alm-funded alliance. Sanity cautions otherwise. No equation could be more convoluted, no logic more perverted, where 35,000 innocent lives are lost, not to mention $68 billion blown away to beseech an enslaving $17 million in aid. In the recent past we managed to survive years of sanctions, without receiving a single penny as aid in the wake of the Pressler Amendment.
Our ‘governors' ignore unanimous parliamentary resolutions and continue to work towards deterring a stand which calls for making and finding indigenous solutions to our problems. A Bishop Tutu quote readily comes to mind - "White man came to my country with the Bible in his hand. He said to me, son, kneel down, close your eyes and pray. I did and when I opened my eyes, I had the Bible and he had my land."
We were given dollars and a gun in our hand, told to close our eyes and kneel down. Still on our knees, how long before we open our eyes, only to find a smoking gun in our hand and nothing left to see?
The writer is a freelance contributor.Email: miradnanaziz@gmail.com
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