Pakistan: Where Politics and Corruption are the same

Mahboob A. Khawaja, Ph.D.

In August 2011, the US media reported that Raymond Davis was arrested and charged with two counts of attempted attacks to open fire at 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, Geelani and General Kiyani) and demand an answer if in fact Lahore is located in a “war zone” of 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.

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 widely corrupt social and political imagery of the Muslim nation?

“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.” Andrew Gavin Marshall “Imperial Eye on Pakistan- Pakistan in Pieces, Part 1 (Global Research: 5/30/2011)

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After decades-old culture of corrupt politics and missing accountable leadership, Pakistanis are being indoctrinated to listen to the sadistic and literally ignorant politicians for a new beginning of political manifestation. In time and history context, the new element being that there is nothing new at all except a repeat exercise in futility to foresee the same politicians- and the same faces under different titles asking the masses to support the institutionalized corrupt politics of the few.

Corruption could be synonymous to human activities and is essentially outcome of ignorance, greed and mismanagement. However, under the influence of global news media communications, there is an emerging impulse of awareness of the changing realities of the landscape - masses are coming out of the slumber and questioning the incompetent and corrupt politicians. But politicians are part of the problems and cannot be part of any rational solutions. Over half of a century of continued military rule has incapacitated the body politics of the nation by dismantling all public institutions. The only institution that works is the corruption and corruption across the board. One wonders, who is not corrupt in Pakistan? Could the institutions of corruption be terminated by the judgments of the Supreme Court alone?  In case, where the highest legal institution has asked the government to act upon the verdict, the corrupt rulers simply sideline the judgments under the shadows of political expediency. The people of Pakistan need to understand the problems as they are without political illusions. Pakistan faces manifold problems within and outside for its survival. The immediate one is to disconnect its affiliation with the US led bogus “war on terrorism” and to restore a sense of normalcy by facilitating a new non-partisan government under new leadership. Zardari and his gangstersim have ruined the honor and dignity of the Muslim nation. Intellectually and morally, this is the worst instance that Pakistani nation is enduring to see PPP-MQM-Sharif’s PML-N in the political powerhouse.  It is as if Pakistani nation is devoid of any rational THINKING and sense of direction for its future.

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 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 NY Time (07/2007) 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.

One of the major beneficiaries of this cruel scheme of things was General Pervaz Musharaf and some of his military-political comrades –the working agents of influence to counteract the US- British engineered “Islamic terrorism” in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Former President Bush claimed to have invested $10. Billion in General Musharaf to contain the Islamic militancy. If Condeelica Rice (the former US Secretary of States in Bush administration), is to be believed, General Musharaf provided vital secret information on the Pakistani nuclear arsenals to the US Government. The US needed these preemptive measures to guard their short-long terms political and military interests and enhance the failing economy with new wars. General Musharaf now lives in $1.4 million bungalow in London protected by the British security services.

American friendship is more dangerous than its publicly defined animosity. Rejecting cynicism but pondering on the US rationale of “war of terrorism”, there are ample similarities of the blueprint what happened in Iraq, the same fate could be waiting for Pakistan.  Saddam Hussain was a paid FBI agent for over two decades but once he challenged the US policy orientations and interests, a friend became an enemy and the US attacked Iraq under the false notion of WMD, occupied its wealth of natural resources, facilitated a culture of violence and killings and hanged Saddam Husain and so far, massacred more than three million civilian Iraqis and destroyed the social and political habitats across Iraq.  Isn’t the same blueprint in place working for Pakistan? Oh well, recall, there were 22 Iraq Generals with families (friends of the US and conspirators of Iraq) that the US occupation forces airlifted from Baghdad airport when Saddam was removed and gave them asylum in the US. Now, under the Obama administration, the US government has intensified its strategy to engulf the Pakistani nation with military and psychological terrorist activities. There is Blackwater Security and other phony NGO’s death squads active in many parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan. 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.  The Petraeus proposal as quoted by a “senior American officer” stating, “We’ve never been as close as we are now to getting the go-ahead to go across.”

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 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, Geelani and General Kiyani) and demand an answer if in fact Lahore is located in a “war zone” of 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. 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 widely corrupt social and political imagery of the Muslim nation? Now come to the unwarranted and unjustifiable recent killing of 26 Pakistani soldiers and officers in the Mehmand agency bordering Afghanistan. It is a shame to Pakistan and its people, being an ally of the US, should be attacked by its very forces. 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 to the same context. 

Zardari operates in close cooperation with the leader of MQM – Altaf Husain - most Pakistanis would define him as an agent of the Indian Secret police working against Pakistan. No wonder, how Zardari’s PPP and MQM are realigned to stand together in a future political election. The PPP Government comprises of several indicted criminals who continue to hold high offices in the country. General Musharaf even dismissed the Chief Justice of Pakistan to ensure his own power and survival. None of these people were worthy of leadership or suitable to hold any office of public responsibility. The common folks of Pakistan were dealt a cruel blow to their hopes for change and a promising future. None of these perverted and sadistic rulers enriched with cancerous ego and divided consciousness feel any sense of guilt in their public behavior. In 2009, the international media reported that 12,900 people were killed in Pakistan for the insane satisfaction of the US led warmongering. In 2010, more than 3,000 innocent civilians are reported to have been killed by the US drone attacks in North-South Waziristan. The real figures could be multiplied as no credible data is maintained by the aggressive parties. Perhaps, the victims of the illegal drone attacks should go to the International Court of Justice including filing the cases within Pakistan and at the US courts to demand compensation from the US Government. The war on terrorism has crippled the nation across the board in social, economic, political and public life. The net beneficiaries are the Generals, Bhuttos and Zardari while the Pakistani nation is entrapped and being strangulated by the few. Pakistani nation wants to hold these criminals to accountability in a court of law. The recent Wikileaks documents reveal how some of the Generals and the PPP politicians are accomplice to conspire against the interest of the people of Pakistan. Their mindset and behavior belong to draconian age full of poisonous backdoor conspiracies for continued power sharing governance. The so called PPP operated democracy does not have roots in Pakistani society; it is a mere foreign illusion to destroy the nation by its own agents. The political gangsterism has ruined the life of ordinary Pakistanis. These agents of foreign rule have no sense of fear and shame that emboldens them to commit any wicked and cruel crime against the freedom and security of Pakistan.

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.”

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 eliminating its future as a stable nation. This is a clear conspiracy to dismantle the Muslim nation from within.

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 perceive, plan and actively participate in a defining role for the social, economic, educational and political reconstruction of the nation 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. 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 living Pakistan. Pakistan NEEDS a new government 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 looks 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.

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. The answer rests with the new generation of educated and intelligent people to assume this vital role. A change would facilitate new opportunities, new ideas and engage morally and intellectually competent people to THINK and workout rational and realistic remedies for a new beginning. Pakistan needs to disconnect its coerced ties with the few sadistic and naïve politicians. To make a new future to happen out of the planned ideas and ideals, it is important that General Musharaf, Zardari, Geelani, Sharifs and so many other collaborative monsters must see the day in a court of law. They must be held accountable for their crimes against the people of Pakistan. If this does not happen, it will be unthinkable to foresee a new beginning or a different future. Looking at the current events, the dead politicians are again raising slogans to serve the interests of the people of Pakistan. There are multiple political stunts being staged by the politicians and their accomplice military Generals. Could the dead Bhuttos-Zardaris - Sharifs and the Generals be a reference point or a changing force for the making of the future?  Those educated and intelligent Pakistanis enriched with knowledge, global visions, wisdom and passion for anew and truly democratic Pakistan, could make positive things happen and make the difference with courage and imagination in devising new system of governance suitable to the Muslim nation, share expertise in problem solving and workable solutions and change management of the old neo-colonialism and obsolete system of governance maintained by the few blood suckers. Is this not what the Pakistani people should organize themselves to strive as a worthy aim and achieve it?