Pakistan: Darkness Renewed

Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD.

Daily killings of innocent citizens speak out loud that political darkness is renewed and that Pakistan needs a Navigational Change. Terrorists are terrorizing the nation. Perhaps, it is reasonable to assume that there is no responsible political governance in Pakistan. Ironically, the same security forces and their elite administrators are paid by the Foreign Master and they generate daily statistic of hundreds of killings by drone attacks and ‘extremism.’ They are well paid in cash dollars to do the job - the role and functions of traitors who deserve to be questioned and be held accountable in a court of law.

Man’s inhumanity to Man

'Many and sharp the num'rous ills
Inwoven with our frame!
More pointed still we make ourselves
Regret, remorse, and shame!
And Man, whose heav'n-erected face
The smiles of love adorn, -
Man's inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn

(Robert Burns. Man was made to Mourn: A Dirge, 1785)

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Politics has become a bloody business to maintain power and be affluent. Daily killings of innocent citizens are no news to the Pakistani politics. Within a month, twice innocent citizens were targeted in Quetta - bloodbath that bears religious insanity and troubling signs of continued disintegration of the Muslim nation. Those responsible for these cold blooded massacres of the civilians have no relationship to Islam. It is insanity at work. All citizens of Pakistan must have security and protection. Ironically, the civilian administration and the Generals cannot provide security to the beleaguered nation. But they are active in military engagements sponsored by the Foreign Master (USA) to kill the people labeled as “extremists” and “terrorists.”. Why the citizens cannot get security from their own Generals and security forces? Why is it that no killers are found or brought to justice? If there is an effective civilian government, why can’t they arrest the perpetrators of sadistic gangesterism?  Most likely, the investigation will lead to few political monsters running the administration. Global community sees Pakistan drowning fast in its own search for survival.  If the security forces cannot protect the citizens, what else are they good for?  Master has free hand to use the same blueprint of operations as is the case in Iraq and Afghanistan -  invest in sectarianism and help the people to become helpless and start killing each other and they will be dismantled on their own without firing a single bullet from outside.

More than a decade ago, the strategic plan was worked out in concert with General Musharaf to keep him in power. Under the guise of bogus War on Terror led by the US and its allies in Afghanistan and Iraq and continuing its spill-over into

 Pakistan. Politics means self-interests and self grooming. Pakistan enjoys a junk history of so called leaders over half of a century - time and opportunities for change and reformation stolen by the few Generals and their accomplice politicians. What the Pakistani nation wants and deserves is never part of their thinking and agenda. These thugs turned monsters rulers follow their own ambitions to enforce lawlessness, killings and destructions of  the social , economic and political infrastructures. After half of a century of the military rule, martial laws, broken dreams of democracy and freedom, dismantled public institutions and continued disconnected governance by thugs and crime riddled people like Zardari and his gangsters, how should the world view the Pakistani nation - its moral norms, political culture and integrity? What tragic picture comes out of the daily massacres of innocent civilians and corrupt social and political imagery of the Muslim nation? 

Andrew Gavin Marshall (“Imperial Eye on Pakistan- Pakistan in Pieces, Part 1, Global Research: 5/30/2011) offers a candid context to the prevalent problem:

“America has, in recent years, altered its strategy in Pakistan in the direction of destabilization. In short, Pakistan is an American target. The reason: Pakistan’s growing military and strategic ties to China, America’s primary global strategic rival. In the ‘Great Game’ for global hegemony, any country that impedes America’s world primacy – even one as historically significant to America as Pakistan – may be sacrificed upon the altar of war……….  Pakistan will very likely continue to be destabilized and ultimately collapse. What is not mentioned in these assessments, however, is the role of the military and intelligence communities in making this a reality; a veritable self-fulfilling prophecy.”

The US led war has transformed its egoistic urge into a monstrous situation of unwarranted deaths and killings of the civilian population under the bogus guise of terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan. American policy makers follow a double-edged strategy: they classify “Pakistan as the most dangerous state breeding terrorism” (Foreign Policy, 01.2011), and continue to accelerate terrorism of war on the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan to create more terrorism as substance for the policy rationale.  At the end of the 2010, the US failed strategies and military losses in Afghanistan look for face-lifting measures.

 The New York Times reported (12/21/2010) that senior American military commanders – meaning Gen. David Petraeus (at the time) and his colleagues at ISAF – are pushing for raids into Pakistan aimed at capturing Taliban commanders and bringing them back to Afghanistan for interrogation. The intensification of drone attacks inside Pakistan has devastated the civilian lives in the border region. The corrupt Pakistani regime under Zardari has allowed the US forces to invade and kill its own people. One of the major aims of the US policy (as pointed out by the NY Times), is to “disrupt the whole enterprise in Pakistan, including the civilian government”. Political opponents of the existing government would be “screaming for blood”, and the military would feel that it had to act against the government.

The global news media and the New York Time (05/19/2007) made it known that “Pakistani Generals are paid to do the job.” These assignments included killings of their own people and destruction of the institutions and infrastructure to seek insane justification that US friends are doing the job in return for cash payments.

American friendship is more dangerous than its publicly defined animosity. According to the NY Times (12/21/2010), the policy being pursued by the Obama administration, tends to insulate it from such warnings of potentially disastrous consequences of an aggressive U.S. military role in Pakistan. The administration increased the number of CIA drone strikes in northwest Pakistan over that of the Bush administration – a policy requiring that it discount the political fallout of the drone campaign in Pakistan. The CIA has also set up “fusion centres” with the Pakistani intelligence agency, the ISI, aimed at making the Pakistani military more dependent on U.S. intelligence and less likely to be responsive to public opposition to U.S. military activities in Pakistan. 

Andrew Gavin Marshall “Imperial Eye on Pakistan- Pakistan in Pieces, Part 1 (Global Research: 5/30/2011) states that “in December of 2000, the CIA released a report of global trends to the year 2015, which stated that by 2015, “Pakistan will be more fractious, isolated, and dependent on international financial assistance.”[1] Further, it was predicted, Pakistan:

Will not recover easily from decades of political and economic mismanagement, divisive politics, lawlessness, corruption and ethnic friction. Nascent democratic reforms will produce little change in the face of opposition from an entrenched political elite and radical Islamic parties.”

Andrew Gavin Marshall puts the emerging realities in context:

“The war in Afghanistan is inherently related to the situation in Pakistan……… In September of 2008, the editor of Indian Defence Review wrote an article explaining that a stable Pakistan is not in India’s interests: “With Pakistan on the brink of collapse due to massive internal as well as international contradictions, it is matter of time before it ceases to exist.” He explained that Pakistan’s collapse would bring “multiple benefits” to India, including preventing China from gaining a major port in the Indian Ocean, which is in the mutual interest of the United States. The author explained that this would be a “severe jolt” to China’s expansionist aims, and further, “India’s access to Central Asian energy routes will open up.”

For ages, the Pakistani Generals and their corrupt by-products – Bhuttos, Sharifs, Chaudris and Zardaris have gone unchecked and they all deserve to see the MIRROR. Who does not know the double standard pitched in by Zardari and the General Kiyani on the Raymond Davis case and his final freedom against the killing of two Pakistani young men at Lahore?  In August, the US media reported that Raymond Davis was arrested and charged with two counts of attempted attacks to open fire and kill civilians in Colorado and Washington. The issue of his killing of two Pakistani civilians was referred to in the US court. Raymond Davis claimed that he acted in self defense as he was operating in a “War Zone.” The US prosecutor questioned his assertion and clarified that “Lahore” (Pakistan) “is not located in a war zone” but that the war was going on in neighboring Afghanistan. Raymond Davis again contended and justified that “Lahore” is located in a “War Zone.”  One wonders, since when the US Government and its spying agents are actively engaged in fighting in a war zone – Lahore - that the world has no knowledge about it. Should the people of Pakistan not question the treacherous rulers (Zardari and General Kiyani) and demand an answer if in fact Lahore is located in a “war zone” about which the Pakistani masses have no idea except their sadistic rulers who helped Raymond Davis to escape the normal course of legal justice in Pakistan. The US policy is clear from the beginning - the war in Afghanistan is meant to go beyond the obvious and to inside Pakistan and to dismantle the Pakistani nuclear weapons. Musharaf and his military colleagues were well paid to undertake treachery and treason to the Pakistani nation. Zardari is no exception, just an extension of the same setup. 

Andrew Gavin Marshall points out that David Kilcullen advisor to “President Obama warned in April of 2009, that Pakistan could collapse within months, and that,

“We have to face the fact that if Pakistan collapses it will dwarf anything we have seen so far in whatever we're calling the war on terror now.” The adviser explained that this would be unlike the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, which each had a population of over 30 million, whereas “Pakistan has [187] million people and 100 nuclear weapons, an army which is bigger than the American army, and the headquarters of al-Qaeda sitting in two-thirds of the country which the Government does not control.”

Pakistani politics is synonymous to corruption. There are no functional public institutions to offer rational and impartial analysis of the real world problems. None of the political establishments or independent politicians have the credibility to move the masses from a crippled present into a politically sustainable future. Conscientious and thinking people of Pakistan must strive to workout freedom from exploitation and death squads operated by these so called democrats. A dire sense of reality would ask for change and reformation of the cancerous political governance. Pakistan desperately needs a new government of non-partisan people to disengage its status-quo of collaborative warmongering and to determine a new policy to end the collaboration with the US War and demand immediate withdrawals of the US-British troops from neighboring Afghanistan and to stop drone attacks and incursions into the Pakistani tribal belts of Waziristan and Baluchistan province. The war engagement is killing the people of Pakistan and undermining its future as a stable nation. This is a clear conspiracy to dismantle the Muslim nation from within

Once again, out of the daily civilian bloodbaths and public insecurity, there are talks of new political elections. Another political election is not remedy of the present and continuing political killings and sickness. If the present is a reference point, the future will truly be engulfed with wickedness of darkness. There appears to be no light or hope for change and to undo the corrupt system of politics. To imagine ANEW Pakistan under sustainable  system of governance and honest and 21^st century intelligent leadership  -  the thinking hub of the new and educated generation must have opportunities to imagine, plan and actively participate in a defining role for the social, economic, educational and political reconstruction of the nation and to facilitate a promising future. So far, the young generations have been deprived by the influential feudal lords dominating the political landscape. The bogus set-up of the National Assembly and Senate and federal governance is disconnected joint of Pakistani politics. They reflect a burden on people’s conscience and morality. There is no honorable role for Bhuttos, Zardaris, military Generals and Sharifs to be part of Pakistan’s future. They are all dead entries with no relevance to the prevalent realities of the Muslim nation. Are there no intelligent and honest people left in politics to think of Pakistan and its future?  Pakistan NEEDS ANEW Beginning- a new system of governance under new and intelligent proactive leadership having confidence of the people and a foreign policy to detach itself from the US warmongering and show publicly a shifting metaphor of freedom from the foreign dictates. Pakistani nation must look for change and new and politically responsible leadership and the answer rests with the vision and honest commitment of the new educated generation to serve the people of Pakistan and safeguard its future from further bloodshed and disintegration.