The Hypocrisy and Danger of Anti-China Demonstrations
By Floyd Rudmin
Global Research, April 18, 2008
We hear that Tibetans suffer “demographic aggression” and “cultural genocide”. But we do not hear those terms applied to Spanish and French policies toward the Basque minority. We do not hear those terms applied to the US annexation of the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1898. And Diego Garcia? In 1973, not so long ago, the UK forcibly deported the entire native Chagossian population from the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. People were allowed one suitcase of clothing. Nothing else. Family pets were gassed, then cremated. Complete ethnic cleansing. Complete cultural destruction. Why? In order to build a big US air base. It has been used to bomb Afghanistan and Iraq, and soon maybe to bomb Iran and Pakistan. Diego Garcia, with nobody there but Brits and Americans, is also a perfect place for rendition, torture and other illegal actions.
When the Olympics come to London in 2012, the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu will certainly lead the demonstrators protesting the “demographic aggression” and “cultural genocide” in Diego Garcia. The UN Secretary General, the President of France, the Chancellor of Germany, the new US President and the entire US Congress will certainly boycott the opening ceremonies.
The height of hypocrisy is this moral posturing about 100 dead in race riots in Lhasa, while the USA, UK and more than 40 nations in the Coalition of the Willing wage a war of aggression against Iraq. This is not “demographic aggression” but raw shock-and-awe aggression. A war crime. A war on civilians, including the intentional destruction of the water and sewage systems, and the electrical grid. More than one million Iraqis are now dead; five million made into refugees. The Western invaders may not be doing “cultural genocide” but they are doing cultural destruction on an immense scale, in the very cradle of Western Civilization. Why is the news filled with demonstrators about Tibet but not about Iraq?
And as everyone knows but few dare say, “demographic aggression” and “cultural genocide” can be applied most accurately to Israel’s settlement policies and systematic destruction of Palestinian communities. On this, the Dalai Lama seems silent. Demonstrators don’t wave flags for bulldozed homes, destroyed orchards, or dead Palestinian children.
The Chinese Context
The Chinese government is responsible for the well-being and security of one-fourth of humanity. Race riots and rebellion cannot be tolerated, not even when done by Buddhist monks.
Chinese Civilization was already old when the Egyptians began building pyramids. But the last 200 years have not gone well, what with two Opium Wars forcing China to import drugs, and Europeans seizing coastal ports as a step to complete colonial control, then the Boxer Rebellion, the collapse of the Manchu Dynasty, civil war, a brutal invasion and occupation by Japan, more civil war, then Communist consolidation and transformation of society, then Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Such events caused tens of millions of people to die. Thus, China’s recent history has good reasons why social order is a higher priority than individual rights. Race riots and rebellion cannot be tolerated.
Considering this context, China’s treatment of its minorities has been exemplary compared to what the Western world has done to its minorities. After thousands of years of Chinese dominance, there still are more than 50 minorities in China. After a few hundred years of European dominance in North and South America, the original minority cultures have been exterminated, damaged, or diminished.
Chinese currency carries five languages: Chinese, Mongolian, Tibetan, Uigur, and Zhuang. In comparison, Canadian currency carries English and French, but no Cree or Inuktitut. If the USA were as considerate of ethnic minorities as is China, then the greenback would be written in English, Spanish, Cherokee and Hawaiian.
In China, ethnic minorities begin their primary schooling in their own language, in a school administered by one of their own community. Chinese language instruction is not introduced until age 10 or later. This is in sharp contrast to a history of coerced linguistic assimilation in most Western nations. The Australian government recently apologized to the Aboriginal minority for taking children from their families, forcing them to speak English, beating them if they spoke their mother tongue. China has no need to make such apology to Tibetans or to other minorities.
China’s one-child-policy seems oppressive to Westerners, but it has not applied to minorities, only to the Han Chinese. Tibetans can have as many children as they choose. If Han people have more than one child, they are punished.
There is a similar preference given to minorities when it comes to admission to universities. For example, Tibetan students enter China’s elite Peking University with lower exam scores than Han Chinese students.
China is not a perfect nation, but on matters of minority rights, it has been better than most Western nations. And China achieved this in the historical context of restoring itself and recovering from 200 years of continual crisis and foreign invasion.
Historical Claims
National boundaries are not natural. They all arise from history, and all history is disputable. Arguments and evidence can always be found to challenge a boundary. China has long claimed Tibet as part of its territory, though that has been hard to enforce during the past 200 years. The Dalai Lama does not dispute China’s claim to Tibet. The recent race riots in Tibet and the anti-Olympics demonstrations will not cause China to shrink itself and abandon part of its territory. Rioters and demonstrators know that.
Foreign governments promoting Tibet separatism and demonstrators demanding Tibet independence should look closer to home. Canadians can campaign for Québec libre. Americans can support separatists in Puerto Rico, Vermont, Texas, California, Hawaii, Guam, and Alaska. Brits can work for a free Wales, and Scotland for the Scots. French can help free Tahitians, New Caledonians, Corsicans, and the Basques. Spaniards can also back the Basques, or the Catalonians. Italians can help Sicilian separatists or the Northern League. Danes can free the Faeroe Islands. Poles can back Cashubians. Japanese can help Okinawan separatists, and Filipinos can help the Moros. Thai can promote Patanni independence; Indonesians can promote Acehnese independence. New Zealanders can leave the islands to the Maori; Australians can vacate Papua. Sri Lankans can help Tamil separatists; Indians can help Sikh separatists.
Nearly every nation has a separatist movement of some kind. There is no need to go to Tibet, to the top of the world, to promote ethnic separatism. China is not promoting separatism in other nations and does not appreciate other nations promoting separatism in China. The people most oppressed, most needing a nation of their own, are the Palestinians. There is a worthy project to promote and to demonstrate about.
Danger of Demonstrations
These demonstrations do not serve Tibetans, but rather use Tibetans for ulterior motives. Many Tibetans, therefore, oppose these demonstrations. Many Chinese remember their history and see the riots in Lhasa and subsequent demonstrations as another attempt by foreign powers to dismember and weaken China. There is grave danger that Chinese might come to fear Tibetans as traitors, resulting in wide spread anti-Tibetan feelings in China.
Fear that an ethnic minority serves foreign forces caused Canada, during World War 1, to imprison its Ukranian minority in concentration camps. For similar reasons, the Ottomans deported their Armenian minority and killed more than a million in death marches. The German Nazis saw the Jewish minority as traitors who caused defeat in World War 1; hence deportations in the 1930s and death camps in the 1940s. During World War 2, both Canada and the USA feared that their Japanese immigrant minorities were traitorous and deported them to concentration camps. Indonesians fearing their Chinese minority, deported 100,000 in 1959 and killed thousands more in 1965. Israel similarly fears its Arab minority, resulting in deportations and oppression.
Hopefully, the Chinese government and the Chinese people will see Tibetans as victims of foreign powers rather than agents of foreign powers. However, if China reacts like other nations have in history and starts systematic severe repression of Tibetans, then today’s demonstrators should remember their role in causing that to happen.
Conclusion
The demonstrators now disparaging China serve only to distract themselves and others from seeing and correcting the current failings of their own governments. If the demonstrators will take a moment to listen, they will hear the silence of their own hypocrisy.
The consequences of these demonstrations are 1) China will stiffen its resolve to find foreign influences inciting Tibetans to riot, and 2) the governments of the USA, UK, France and other Western nations will have less domestic criticism for a few weeks. That is all. These demonstrations can come to no good end.
The Hypocrisy and Danger of Anti-China Demonstrations
How would a communist USA pay for "free" health care and education?
In a time when all politicians are crying about too little money to pay for programs, and with an administration racking up the biggest deficits in history (even bigger than the Reagan deficits!), the problem of how to pay for social programs seems insurmountable.
However, there are large amounts of money available. One source would be to cut the military budget by half—still leaving us with the largest military budget of any country in the world (instead of as large as all other countries combined, as at present), and transferring the funds to social programs. That would amount to several hundred billion dollars per year. We could provide for all real defense needs if we weren’t maintaining hundreds of overseas bases, if we weren’t engaging in military adventurism to the tune of billions per year, if we didn’t run military construction on a “cost plus” basis to give super-profits to the military industrial complex.
If we returned the tax rates to the levels in the 1960s, with higher tax rates for the wealthy and corporations, that would raise additional hundreds of billions of dollars per year.
Such steps would be enough to pay for free health care and education for all, and for stepping up many other social programs, and for avoiding the manufactured “Social Security crisis” they keep trying to frighten us with.
None of these steps is revolutionary, just radical reformism—for example, returning to the tax rates of the 1960s wouldn’t cripple the capitalist system, capitalists made plenty of money in the 1960s, it was a boom period, so such tax rates aren’t “confiscatory.” But returning to those rates would solve the current massive budget deficits of the federal, state, and municipal governments.
If we go farther and take revolutionary steps, nationalizing the major industries and finance capital (banks, etc.), the profits, instead of enriching the wealthy, could be used to provide greatly increased benefits for the working class, the large majority of the population, those who in fact create all that wealth.
In other words, we favor progressive tax structures, favor increasing taxes on the wealthy, favor removing the cap on Social Security taxes (bringing in billions more every year and keeping that system financially solvent way past the baby boom retirement years by making the rich pay the same percentages as the rest of us). We oppose both flat rate taxes and sales taxes (except those on luxury goods), as falling heaviest on working families and the poor.
How would free education and free medical care be paid for? Right now, each year billions of dollars go into the pockets of already wealthy capitalists. That’s one source of money to pay for these changes. Right now much of our tax dollars go to making repayments on the national debt, billions of dollars a year, and this is another source of money—if the banks and other financial institutions are nationalized, then the democratic political structure can rationally decide on realistic repayment options and interest rates, freeing up much of this money for public benefits. Another source is that, contrary to the common claim that private business can do everything cheaper, many things can be done more cheaply by government, by pooling resources, by maximizing economies of scale, by eliminating unnecessary paperwork. Before you guffaw, since government right now causes much unnecessary paperwork, let me point to a program that works well. In Washington State, the state provides worker’s compensation benefits—provides the insurance for workplace injuries. Private insurance companies, on top of their profits, run about 20% administrative costs. Since they are banned from operating in the state (except for large employers who can set up their own programs under certain conditions), and the state thus covers everyone, they keep the administrative costs to about 2%! In years when the state’s investments are paying well, the program has actually returned money to the state treasury, since there are no profits and since administrative/paperwork costs are so low. No doubt many government programs don’t work this way, but it is possible, especially when they are not set up to provide profits to the private sector. This is another source of billions.
For another example, if we as a society continued to spend the same amount of money on health care each year, but had a single-payer nationalized health care system, we could cover everyone for the same amount we spend now. That’s right, for the same amount, everyone could be covered if we eliminated the profits and excessive administrative costs of the insurance companies, the for-profit health care chains, the pharmaceutical companies, and similar needless expenses.
President Pervez Musharraf .......... EXCURSIONIST PRESIDENT !!!!!
EXCURSIONIST PRESIDENT !!!!!
M WAQAR
Well the latest news is…..‘’During the past five years, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf traveled to around 40 countries costing the country's exchequer Rs 1.4 billion‘’, I am sure Uncle Sam can figure out now where his Aid money was being spent. I am sure Mush could win American Express frequent traveler points very easily. Lets not forget that Musharraf is the president of one of the poorest countries in the world, where people are compelled to auction their children for the sake of bread, sell their kidneys or to commit suicide, Innocent people getting killed by suicide bombers but president of this poor nation spend such a huge money on his world tours, this money could be spend on education, getting rid of load shedding and so many other projects and problems Pakistanis face every day .It is a fact that such heavy expenses from public exchequer were not spent by the heads of any other conutry like China, India, Russia, USA, Germany, Canada and UK, who are the richest countries of the world. There are over 40 million people in Pakistan who cant read or write,Rs.1.4 billions on foreign tours by Mush could built world class schools and colleges. It is really disgusting. I think Pakistanis deserve to know why such money was spend on useless so called diplomatic tours. Is there anyone in Pakistan who thinks and cares about poor people, people who are begging on streets, people who are committing suicides because of poverty, selling kids and their body parts. I don’t understand how Pakistanis president and other elite face leaders of developed countries, in those countries their leaders care about their nation, people. I don’t think Pakistan’s leaders have any self respect or ego. Musharraf claimed to save Pakistan from two scourge: corrupt, money-grubbing politicians and Islamic extremists but he failed because his intentions were not sincere. He is corrupt just like any other military dictator and politician of Pakistan. On these tours, Musharraf not only spent with an open heart and both hands but also took with him more than thousand people on these tours to show the world his generosity. According to the media reports, the Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mehmood Qureshi told National Assembly that, President Musharraf was on foreign tour every 50th day on average and spent a total of 201 days abroad during these five years. In these tours, Musharraf didn't’ reside at embassy or at the house of any ambassador, rather he selected the most plush and posh residence for him and for his entourage. Following are the countries President Musharraf visited during Jan 2003 - Jan 2008 with number of visits to each of the country:
Russian Federation (1); Malaysia (3); Saudi Arabia (8); US (6); UK (3); Germany (1); France (3); Tunisia (1); Algeria (1); Morocco (2); Canada (1); China (2); Korea (1); Turkey (4); Switzerland (3); Sweden (1); Finland (1); Azerbaijan (1); Netherlands (1); Italy (1); UAE (5); Afghanistan (3); Brazil (1); Argentina (1); Mexico (1); Kyrgyzstan (1); Uzbekistan (1); India (1); Indonesia (2); Philippines (1); Qatar (1); Australia (1); New Zealand (1); Kuwait (1); Yemen (1); Norway (1); Belgium (2); Cuba (1); Jordan (1); Syria (1); Egypt (1); Iran (1); Spain (1); Poland (1) and Bosnia (1).
Musharraf’s stay at a luxurious hotel opposite of Hyde Park(UK) had cost Rs. 2 Million or roughly £17,000 per night to Pakistani tax payers. I think this money could save some Pakistanis who were going to commit suicide because of poverty. This is Pakistan’s President who can not see the people hunger and poverty in his country. Wonderful, Mr. President wonderful!!! You abused, accused and insult the most honorable chief justice of Pakistan of negligence and corruption, but you abused your own self and insulted your colleagues. You have proved that misusing of power spending the govt. exchequer lavishly is a noble cause. Spending millions over night serves the best interest of Pakistani people rather summon the notorious and powerful agencies before the court is dirty job. Flour must be kept out of reach of the people, load shedding, killing and suicide bombing is a noble cause to serve poor Pakistanis. Mr. President, You rule a country, where people even don’t have clean drinki ng water, two-thirds of women and a third of men are illiterate; one in two have extremely hard lives; one in four live desperately below the poverty line. According to the CIA Fact Book on Pakistan, last year the per capita income was $600 ($33,940 in the UK). Eighteen percent of the Pakistani budget goes on the military, while a meager 1% is spent on health and 2% on education. What this means is that Pakistan has among the richest generals and politicians in the world. The army controls aviation, agriculture, housing, industry, every aspect of the economy, and it dispenses patronage in order to divide and rule the opposition. There is no sanitation; no roads; inferior hospitals; poor utilities; rotten water; few state schools. It is estimated that about 32% of Pakistan's population are below the food poverty line rising from a level of 26% in 1988 (GoP, 2002), and about 44% are below the poverty line on the human poverty index (UNDP, 2002). And Musharraf has the nerve, after eight years in power, to say, "I have the national interest foremost." By 2007, Pakistan was among the world’s most dangerous places. This transformation is the result of Musharraf’s long, incompetent rule. His long, highly extravagant foreign tours to publicize his book or beg for more aid are hardly helpful in fighting terrorism or poverty. Musharraf spent billions on image improvement through ‘Enlightened Moderation’, and people are still confused as to what end all that money went???
It is shame that Pakistan is becoming ‘’kidney bazaar’’ but Pakistan’s elite is not aware of this. The rich constitute a very small percentage of the total population but command most of the resources. They live in palatal houses, drive luxury cars, and are educated in elite institutions. Conversely, the poor make up a very large portion of the population but do not have access to basic amenities, such as health, education and safe drinking water.
In February 2000, Mr Shahid Javed Burki (one of Pakistan’s most respected economists and then working in the World Bank) predicted that by the year 2010 Pakistan’s population would reach 170 million of whom 80 million (47 per cent) would be living below the poverty line. I wonder what will be suicide rate because of poverty?
Although Musharraf is not the only one, there is a history of Pakistani elite and bourgeois who spend and stole nation’s money, but it is really disgusting to look at these figures spend on foreign tours by Pakistan’s elite but poor are committing suicides. I don’t have any faith in Pakistani politicians either and I am sure the new Govt officials will do the same thing. It is shame that in Pakistan a terrorist mullah can be released but a journalist like Rehmat Shah Afridi of FP stays in prison.
Khyber Pass
Khyber also spelled KHYBER, or KHAIBAR, most northerly and important of the passes between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The pass connects Kabul with Peshawar. The pass has historically been the gateway for invasions of the Indian subcontinent from the northwest. The name Khyber is also applied to the range of arid, broken hills through which the pass runs and which form the last spurs of the Spin Ghar (Safid Kuh) Range. On either side of the connecting ridge are the sources of two small streams, the beds of which form the Khyber gorge. This narrow gorge forms the Khyber Pass; it winds between cliffs of shale and limestone, 600-1,000 feet (180-300 m) high, and enters the Khyber Hills from the Shadi Bagiar opening, a few miles beyond Jamrud, Pak., and continues northwestward for about 33 miles (53 km). Just beyond the old Afghan fort of Haft Chah, it opens onto the barren Lowyah Dakkah plain, which stretches to the Kabul River.
After a steep ascent at its southern entrance, the pass rises gradually to Fort Ali Masjid (3,174 feet), where the Khyber River (Khyber Khwar) leaves the pass to the south. For 5 miles from Ali Masjid the pass becomes a defile not more than 600 feet wide, flanked by imposing and precipitous walls. From Zintara village on northward, the pass becomes a valley a mile or more wide, with forts, villages, and scattered cultivation plots. About 10 miles west of Ali Masjid lies Landi Kotal fort and cantonment (3,518 feet); this is the highest point in the pass and is also an important market centre with an alternate route back to Peshawar. There the summit widens out northward for 2 miles. The main pass, however, descends from Landi Kotal through Shinwari territory to Landi Khana, where it runs through another gorge and enters Afghanistan territory at Towr Kham (Torkham; 2,300 feet), winding another 10 miles down the valley to Lowyah Dakkah.
The Khyber Pass is threaded by a caravan track and by a good hard-surface road. The railway (opened 1925) through the pass connects Jamrud with Landi Khana, near the Afghan frontier; the line, with its 34 tunnels and 94 bridges and culverts, revolutionized transportation in the area. The pass may be skirted by a road fork that enters the hills about 9 miles north of Jamrud and emerges at Lowyah Dakkah.
Few passes have had such continuing strategic importance or so many historic associations as the Khyber Pass. Through it have passed Persians, Greeks, Mughals, Afghans, and the British, for whom it was the key point in control of the Afghan border. In the 5th century BC Darius I the Great of Persia conquered the country around Kabul and marched through the Khyber Pass to the Indus River. Two centuries later Hephaestion and Perdiccas, generals of Alexander the Great, probably used the pass. Buddhism flourished in and around the Khyber when it was part of Ashoka's kingdom (3rd century BC); Buddhist remains include Kafir Kot (Citadel of the Kafirs), Shopla stupa (also called the Khyber Top), and the stupa near Ali Masjid. The pass was used by Mahmud of Ghazna, Babur, Nader Shah, and Ahmad Shah Durrani and his grandson Shah Zaman in their invasions of India. Ranjit Singh, the Sikh ruler of the Punjab, extended his kingdom as far as Jamrud in the early 19th century.
The Pashtun Afridi people of the Khyber area always resisted foreign control, and numerous punitive expeditions were undertaken against them by the Mughals and the British. The first British advance northward into the Khyber took place in 1839, and during the First Anglo-Afghan War the pass was the scene of many skirmishes with the Afridis. The Treaty of Gandamak, which was signed during the Second Anglo-Afghan War in 1879, left the Khyber clans under British control. In 1897 the Afridis seized the pass and held it for several months but were defeated in the Tirah expedition of 1897. The British became responsible for the safety of the pass, which is now controlled by the Pakistani Khyber Agency.
Pukhtoonistan produces 70 percent timber, 75 percent hydal power, 70 percent maize, 80 percent tobacco.
Foolishness Over the Olympics and Tibet
Foolishness Over the Olympics and Tibet
Tibet has been a part of China since ancient days. Historical records have shown that Tibet had been under the central government of China for more than 700 years since the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368). Less than 6 decades ago, China emerged from a century of colonialist oppression and humiliation at the hands of the very same colonialists that are currently behind the anti-China campaign of disinformation.
Up until the time of the Second World war, Tibet was considered as a part of China as they were trying to curb the encroachments of the British Empire on their territory. However, after the war, Washington decided to use Tibet’s religious enclave in its fight against Communism.
The international community is being barraged with a deliberate and sustained campaign of disinformation about what is going on with Tibet as once again, Washington is providing financial, political, diplomatic and propaganda support to a blatantly racist demonization effort, ostensibly due to “concerns” for “human rights." We’ve already seen the fake claims of genocide in Bosnia and Kosovo, the ridiculous and absurd lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and babies being thrown out of incubators, now we have the poor downtrodden, innocent and abused “freedom fighters" in Tibet.
Curious timing, as preparations are being made for the upcoming Olympics in Beijing. The corporate elitist media and some in-the-pocket politicians now suggest that boycotts be organized against the Beijing Olympics or the opening ceremonies at the very least.
As early as last August, Chinese scholars were warning about the Dalai Lama and what he was up to: "The Dalai Lama is once again provoking activists," said Di Zhankun, a Qinghai-based Tibetologist, claiming that the 71-year-old Dalai Lama is preparing to usher in "an era of violence."
The initial uprising in Lhasa on March 14 had been pre-planned and well orchestrated. We have none other than the Dalai Lama directing the actions of internal terrorists. As part of the so-called Tibet government in exile, the Dalai Lama has managed to grasp media attention worldwide to his “crusade” for an independent Tibet.
The events that unfolded at the lighting of the Olympic flame March 24 in Greece were most revealing. A protest briefly disrupted the ceremonies. Three protesters were arrested, but then summarily released. None were Tibetan. They were three French men, it turns out, all from a notorious right-wing organization funded by the governments of France and the United States as well as some of the richest capitalist elitists in the world. They all are employees of the group called Reporters Without Borders.
What most do not know about Tibet is the sinister historical links to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Tibet’s current “independence” fanatics and rabble rousers maintain close ties with the CIA’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED). It goes beyond any concept of non-violent protest as these individuals have engaged in acts of vandalism and looting, behaving like hooligans and criminals with rampant property destruction, hardly the actions of non-violent protest.
The American Society for a Free Asia, a CIA front, gave unlimited publicity to the cause of Tibetan criminals. The CIA has provided the Tibetan exile movement with $1.7 million a year for its operations against China which includes an annual subsidy of $180,000 for the Dalai Lama.
In the book, “Buddha's Warriors” by Mikel Dunham, is the story of CIA-backed Tibetan Freedom Fighters. In 434 pages, it explains how the CIA took hundreds of Tibetans to the US for combat training and provided them with modern arms.
Protests occurred in the UK and France that truly demonstrated to the world that the spirit of the Olympics has once again been abandoned for questionable motives. However, Gordon Brown ignored calls to rebuff China because of the protests in Tibet, and welcomed the Olympic flame behind Downing Street’s gates. Meanwhile, demonstrators and police clashed just yards away outside of Parliament. The Prime Minister did not hold the torch, but posed for a picture with it after.
In Paris, protesters scaling the Eiffel Tower, grabbed for the flame and forced security officials to repeatedly snuff out the torch and transport it by bus past demonstrators who were shrieking "Free Tibet!"
At another destination in San Francisco, three protesters wearing harnesses and helmets climbed up the Golden Gate Bridge and tied the Tibetan flag and two banners to its cables. The banners read "One World One Dream” and "Free Tibet."
A media charade occurred when some of these “peaceful” monks in Tibet managed to get themselves arrested for the benefit of a visiting media team. China allowed a group of about two dozen reporters into Lhasa for a three-day escorted visit. The monks in a carefully choreographed action pushed in front of journalists on cue and recited a list of carefully prepared “grievances” and thereby sidetracked and disrupted the event. One of the monks also declared their intended purpose: “We know we will probably be arrested but we have to keep fighting,” Naturally the group of monks ended up by being surrounded by security guards and other officials who tried to quiet the disturbance. Lights, camera, action!
Indian Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma said India will ensure the smooth run of the relay of the Olympic torch in the country, the Press Trust of India reported. "As far as the Government of India is concerned, we are committed to providing complete security to the Olympic torch," Sharma was quoted as saying.
The European Union has rejected any boycott, saying it would be counterproductive to efforts to improve “human rights” in China. "Boycotting the XXIX Olympiad is not the right answer to the current political problems," said a statement from Slovenia, which holds the EU's rotating presidency.
Unfortunately, it has become politically expedient to hate China in the empire today. After all, China sends them cheap junk . Never mind that corporate elitist businesses order that cheap junk and China makes it according to the specifications given them by these companies, all to maximize profits at the expense of quality. Blaming China gets the companies off the hook for what they ordered, inspected and accepted and willingly sold to the public for huge profits. China is being used as a scapegoat, albeit a very prosperous and wealthy scapegoat.
Meanwhile the Dali Lama rolled into Seattle at his home base USA to attend a 5 day conference entitled “Seeds of Compassion.” Conference tickets were reported to be sold out. He told the media that China, “Cannot suppress protests against human rights in Tibet.” Rich words coming from a paid CIA shill.
There can be little doubt that the main beneficiaries to the death and destruction sweeping Tibet are in Washington. How disgusting it is to see so many well meaning people deceived into serving the interests of Washington and the corporate elitists in sabotaging the Beijing Olympics. The spirit and nature of the event are being spoiled all to the delight, enrichment and interests of corporate elitists. The Chinese people have a long memory and a keen sense of honor and this will not soon be forgotten or forgiven.
The Taliban blowback
The Taliban blowback
The US enlisted the help of the mujahideen to fight the Soviet army in 1980s Afghanistan. But Pakistan, too, began fostering Islamist extremism. Now, Declan Walsh reports, it is suffering the violent consequences
Declan Walsh The Guardian, Wednesday April 16 2008 Article historyAbout this articleClose This article appeared in the Guardian on Wednesday April 16 2008 on p12 of the Comment & features section. It was last updated at 00:12 on April 16 2008. Two recent films feature Pakistan's lawless North-West Frontier province. The first is Charlie Wilson's War, a glossy Hollywood tale about how a cocaine-sniffing, skirt-chasing congressman helped goad the CIA into a massive covert war against Soviet-occupied Afghanistan in the 1980s.
In one scene Tom Hanks, who plays Wilson, and Julia Roberts, his flinty southern belle, bring a powerful Washington politician named Doc Long to a squalid refugee camp near Peshawar in neighbouring Pakistan. Moved by the plight of the Afghan refugees, Long promises he will send weapons to fight the infidel communists.
"This is good against evil. And I want you to know that America is always going to be on the side of the good," the pudgy white man declares to the turbaned crowd of Afghan exiles. "Allahu Akbar!" they yell. Long punches the air in return. "Allahu Akbar!" he shouts.
The second film is far from glossy; in fact it is a non-fiction production. Shot in Mohmand, a tribal area in Pakistan's borderlands near the Afghan refugee camps created by that conflict in the 80s, Revenge is a straight-to-DVD job. It sells for the equivalent of 40p in the bazaars of Peshawar and its budget is evident in the wobbly camerawork and harsh lighting. But the action is all too real.
In the climactic scene, a Taliban gang parades six men, accused of theft and betrayal, before a crowd of perhaps 5,000 tribesmen. The prisoners are badly beaten, naked to the waist and smeared with their own blood. They are shoved before the central figure - a man in traditional shalwar kameez and basketball boots, brandishing a knife as long as his forearm. Amid much ballyhooing, he beheads the prisoners, one by one.
The camera spares no detail. The head-chopping Talib clamps his hand over his victims' mouths as he hacks at their necks; fellow fighters clamour to take photos with their mobile phones; blood squirts on to the soil. But only one sound is audible. "Allahu Akbar!" the crowd cries. "Allahu Akbar!"
The film exemplifies the fundamentalist fury sweeping Pakistan's frontier region, a fury that has swelled to alarming proportions. Across the North-West Frontier province that abuts Afghanistan, self-proclaimed Taliban forces - a hotchpotch of religious diehards, foreign fugitives, angry tribals and village thugs - are imposing their influence at gunpoint. Girls' schools have closed, movie and music stores have been torched and barbers who dare to shave beards have shuttered their pokey little stalls. Perceived enemies are kidnapped or, in some cases, beheaded.
Even more worrying, the violence is spilling into other parts of Pakistan. A cascade of suicide attacks and bombs have rocked the main cities. Recent victims have included a three-star general stalled in traffic, FBI agents at a pizza joint and the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, killed as she left an election rally in Rawalpindi.
In one of the largest attacks, a massive car bomb gutted a seven-storey police headquarters in Lahore. For days afterwards terrified city residents streamed past to gawp at the awesome destruction. "It looks like we've been attacked by an enemy country," said Muhammad Umar, a municipal clerk, staring at the sagging mess.
The bloodshed has stalled in recent weeks as a new, civilian-led government takes control. But few expect the calm to last. Many Pakistanis blame America. Since 2001 the Pentagon has given the Pakistani army more than £5bn to fight militants in the tribal badlands. But for many Pakistanis this is "America's war" - a fight inadvertently started by Charlie Wilson.
Throughout the 80s the US used Islam as a weapon against the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan, funnelling billions of dollars in weapons to the mujahideen fighters. The struggle became a cause celebre across the Muslim world, sucking in disaffected young men like Osama Bin Laden.
After the Soviet forces crawled home in 1989, Wilson and the CIA largely forgot about their jihadi creation until the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York in September 2001, when the realisation came painfully late.
Pakistanis make this argument forcefully and frequently (though usually omitting to mention that their more respected ally, Saudi Arabia, paid for half of the anti-Soviet jihadi budget). But the 80s jihad also spawned a home-grown malignancy - one that now poses a powerful threat.
Recognising the jihadis' skill with a Kalashnikov and dedication to God, Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) gave them a fresh assignment in the 1990s: Kashmir. Led by Afghan veterans, fighters were secretly trained, armed and funded by the ISI to fight Indian soldiers in Kashmir. The best were later sent to help the Taliban in Afghanistan, then also sponsored by elements within Pakistani intelligence.
But when Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, backed the United States after 2001, the footsoldiers felt betrayed. First they tried to kill Musharraf in 2003; in the past nine months they have launched a blistering offensive against the security forces. A senior Pakistani police official told the Guardian that he believes these elements - loosely termed the "Punjabi Taliban" - have played a central role in the recent violence. Frankenstein's monster has turned on its master.
"The intelligence agencies were so short-sighted not to see the blowback," says another figure with front-line experience, Hassan Abbas. He was a sub-divisional police chief in North-West Frontier province in the late 90s, and is now a research fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "You can switch these guys on," he says. "But it's 100% more difficult to switch them off."
Yet for all that, Pakistan is strangely reluctant to crack down on certain Islamists. While there are those who have been captured or killed, others are allowed to roam free. Some shadowy figures seem almost untouchable: men such as Qari Saifullah Akhtar.
Akhtar, a jihad veteran of three decades' experience, has seen it all. He has been portrayed as hero and villain, godfather and coupster, idol and assassin. He has skirted American bombs, fought dirty wars and become pals with the Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar. Today his past seems to have caught up with him. He languishes in a Karachi jail, accused of orchestrating an attempt on Benazir Bhutto's life last October. But if history is a guide, he is unlikely to see a trial. He may be quietly released or, who knows, mysteriously slip from custody. People like him, it seems, simply know too much.
Akhtar wasn't always seen as the bad guy. Back in 1980, just months after the Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan, he became a pioneer of the modern Pakistani jihad. He left his home in the city of Chishtian in Pakistani Punjab, and headed north to Peshawar in North-West Frontier province. Teaming up with other religiously minded men, he signed up for the fight. News of the glorious exploits of his group, Harkat-ul-Jihad-i-Islami (HUJI), inspired others to follow.
"He was my first amir [commander]," said Maulana Tahir Ashrafi, 35, a baby-faced cleric who heads the Pakistani Ulema (scholars) Council and is a former religious adviser to the government of Punjab. "The Russians were demolishing an Islamic country and it was our duty to defend it. At that time we were the Americans' sugar babies. They thought we were doing their job. We thought we were doing it for God."
Men like Akhtar were friends of America, allying themselves to Afghan commanders and, in the bubbling cauldron of jihad, befriending wealthy Arab fighters, such as Osama bin Laden, according to a former Pakistani intelligence officer, Khalid Khawaja. He said he met Akhtar in a training camp in 1987. "He was one of the first Pakistanis to go for jihad," he said.
After the Russians fled in 1989, a generation of jihadi fighters found themselves fired up with nowhere to go. Pakistan's ISI spy agency gave them a destination. Within a few years, Pakistani guerrilla groups were infiltrating Indian-controlled Kashmir, all under the control of the ISI. Battle-hardened warriors such as Akhtar led the fight. Saudi-funded madrassas provided a steady flow of recruits.
"It was an arrangement that suited the ISI very much," said Muhammad Amir Rana, author of The A to Z of Jehadi Organisations in Pakistan.
But Akhtar soon made it clear that his first allegiance was to Allah, not Pakistan. In 1995 he was part of a fanciful plot by a fundamentalist army general, Zaheerul Islam Abbasi, to overthrow Benazir Bhutto's second government, oust the army and turn Pakistan into an Islamic caliphate. Akhtar's job was to provide the muscle. Once the generals had been arrested or killed, he would lead up to 300 jihadis into action, said Rana.
The plot failed miserably and Akhtar was jailed. But in a pattern that was to recur, he was quietly released months later. Soon after, he slipped back to his stomping ground in Afghanistan, where the Taliban were sweeping to power.
At a time when the ISI was openly supporting the Taliban, Abbasi became a close adviser to Mullah Omar. "He was a sort of consultant," said Rana. And that allegiance made him a new enemy after 9/11: America.
In October 2001, on the first night of the US-led offensive aimed at crushing the Taliban and extremist training grounds in Afghanistan, the US air force blitzed a HUJI training camp in Rishikor, south of Kabul. It was later identified as a graduate school for jihadis. Students from Arab countries, Pakistan and Uzbekistan learned how to kidnap, bomb and shoot.
By the time the bombs landed Akhtar had already fled. But he was less lucky a month later. A spokesman for HUJI reported that US bombs had killed 85 Pakistani fighters in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif. Akhtar, it was said, had gone to Kabul to make preparations for the bodies to be repatriated.
Weeks later, he disappeared. One swashbuckling fable has Akhtar fleeing through the deserts of southern Afghanistan on his motorcycle with Mullah Omar riding pillion as American bombs destroyed the Taliban headquarters in Kandahar. Either way, Akhtar surfaced again three years later, several thousand miles away, in Dubai.
In a highly publicised coup for America and Pakistan, he was seized at Dubai airport and flown to Islamabad. The White House and Musharraf claimed to have nabbed a key al-Qaida player. "Very important," declared President Bush's terrorism adviser, Frances Townsend. The Pakistanis accused Akhtar of involvement in two attempts on Musharraf's life nine months earlier.
Akhtar was kept in custody for almost three years. No court case was lodged, no charges were brought and he disappeared from view. Then last May, amid much public anger about Pakistan's many "disappeared", he was dumped on a busy road south of Islamabad. He went home.
Akhtar might have hoped for the quiet life. His lawyer and family say that he had retired from jihad and started building a khanqah, or religious retreat, on the Grand Trunk Road outside Lahore. In December he spent the holy month of Ramadan deep in meditation at the Syed Ahmed Shah khanqah, a collection of neat, low buildings amid maize fields and lychee orchards to the west of the city.
On a recent Friday morning, a group of young men with frizzy beards welcomed me in a small room off the polished courtyard. They offered sweet tea and biscuits but their faces were sour. "You foreigners call us terrorists because of our beards," snapped one, a clerk from the city's high court, in Urdu.
But after a few sips of tea the harshness melted. Of course they remembered Akhtar, they said. He stayed in a simple upstairs room, fasting through the day and praying deep into the night, said Rehan Ishfaq. "You could tell he was a commander," he said. "But he was treated no differently to anyone else."
To prove the point he named other respected guests who had been treated as equals - Maulana Masood Azhar, leader of the extremist Jaish-e-Muhammad, another Kashmir militant group; and Azam Tariq, a sectarian leader gunned down in 2003.
The men were upset that Akhtar was now in jail. It was all Benazir Bhutto's fault, they said. A few weeks earlier Bhutto's family had posthumously published Reconciliation, the book she was finishing at the time of her death on December 27. In it, she names Akhtar as the puppet-master for a huge suicide bombing that killed 150 people during her homecoming parade in Karachi last October.
"A bomb maker was needed for the bombs. Enter Qari Saifullah Akhtar, a wanted terrorist who had tried to overthrow my second government," she wrote.
Akhtar's lawyer Hashmat Habib says there is no evidence to link his client to the plot. "Qari sahib [sir] is a pious and religious person, yes. But fighting for freedom is no crime," he said. And he has launched an ambitious libel case against the book's New York publishers for $200m in damages - the alleged value of Bhutto's own insurance policy. "A mujahid's [religious fighter's] life is worth more than that of a political leader," he says.
As before, Akhtar is surrounded by more questions than answers. He has not been charged. When the first detention order expired, police flew him to Karachi. When that detention order expired late last month, they renewed his detention for another 30 days. Experts are sceptical he will ever see a trial. A man such as him could shed much light on the intelligence services' past - and possibly present - links with the murky Islamist underworld.
Suspicions linger that the intelligence agencies have not entirely closed the chapter on jihad - possibly in case its practitioners are needed in any future war with India. "Some people seem to be still in the 'good books'. The police are afraid to touch them," said Abbas of Harvard. Several western diplomats echoed this view.
Meanwhile the bombs and the blowback continue. Nobody is safe, not even the family of the man who started it all through his policy of "Islamisation" in contemporary Pakistan - the dictator General Zia-ul-Haq, who ruled Pakistan through the 80s and was a key ally of Charlie Wilson. In the movie, the congressman apologises for requesting a scotch on the rocks in the alcohol-free presidency. "I'll bet that visitors often make that mistake," he quips. "No they don't," says Zia.
A few weeks ago I went to see Ijaz-ul-Haq, Zia's softly spoken son. Until last year, he served as minister for religious affairs under Musharraf. Sitting under a tobacco-coloured portrait of his father, he looked a little dejected. Now the Islamists were out to get him too, he said.
In late December a bomb prematurely exploded 300 yards from his house in southern Punjab. The police linked the putative killer to the Red Mosque, the radical Islamabad mosque where over 100 people died in a confrontation with the army last summer. Haq had led unsuccessful attempts to find a peaceful solution.
There were other ominous echoes. The killer belonged to a militant group that had fought in Kashmir. He had also been to Afghanistan. And he came from a village close to the home of Qari Saifullah Akhtar.
"This is a whole new phenomenon," said Haq. "Even during Afghanistan and Kashmir, we never saw suicide attacks like this." He had raised the walls around his house and erected concrete barricades. Security men roamed the garden. But still he was worried.
"Time is on their side," he said. "They go slowly. It's very scary."
A bearded man wearing a tracksuit, who looked like an ex-soldier, came into the room. A gun appeared to bulge from one pocket. It was time for his employer's evening jog.
The American who funded jihad is also quietly contrite. After September 2001, Charlie Wilson told biographer George Crile that the 1980s fight was a "glorious" time. But the endgame, he admitted, had gone disastrously wrong.
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The Frontier Post
Commitment to Journalism
Prisoner of conscience
M Waqar NY, USA Khyberzalmee@comcast.net
I am extremely disturbed and upset by reading a news item in your newspaper about Editor in Chief of The Frontier Post ; I am surprised that he is still in prison, Rehmat Shah Afridi played a great role by publishing The Frontier Post from Peshawar, The Frontier Post was born during cruel regime of Zia, then I was student at Islamic college, Frontier Post did educate me. Mr. Afridi made Frontier Post voice of Pakhtuns and never hesitated to publish facts even during cruel dictator Zia regime. The Frontier Post is right to mention in news item that Mr Afridi was punished for his pen which he was using for his people against tyrant rulers. Any journalist who does not work for the official media, bourgeois, and elite; is considered to be an "enemy or criminal" and that happens in third world countries, its time for the new government in Pakhtunistan to release Mr. Afridi, I would like to ask all writers on this forum to write and mail letters to new government in Pakistan and write letters to amnesty international and CPJ (www.cpj.org), mention this on all blogs newspapers etc, and force government to release Mr. Afridi and all other journalists from prison. Mr. Afridi is imprisoned because of his peaceful expression of his beliefs. He is victim of an unfair trial. The Frontier Post had been targeted for some time for its investigative journalism; Rehmat Shah Afridi, was sentenced to death for drug offences for which the prosecution failed to produce any compelling evidence. If prosecution was unable to produce any evidence, then why he is still in prison? He is still in prison because he is Pakhtun??? He was arrested because his paper The Frontier Post documented official corruption. That was his job and duty as a journalist and his right to freedom of expression, which he exercised in the course of his work as a journalist. Third-world regimes are known to be intolerant of gutsy journalists and publishers. He published a story detailing how members of the ruling party, including Prime Minister Sharif himself, had through illegal and bizarre use of power and influence obtained massive loans from some public-sector banks, leading to the banks' failure. In USA water gate was exposed by a journalist but he was not send to prison, but in Pakistan corrupt regimes like to control media. He was tried and convicted solely for his journalistic work. He is in jail on cooked-up charges of possessing narcotics. What is the sin of Mr. Rehmat Shah Afridi? Nawaz government sentenced Mr Afridi just because he was the real critic of that regime and was a big hurdle for the enemies of the nation and the country. Did he kill innocent people? The only sin of Mr Rehmat Shah Afridi is that he is the prisoner of conscience; he criticized the government for its illegal acts; he raised voice against cruelty; corruption; he spoke against unfair justice; and he disclosed those who looted the country. Lets not forget that NAWAZ SHARIF afraid for his life and did not stay in prison for more then a year and made a deal with Mush Regime and ran out of country. Rehmat Shah Afridi was exposing the corrupt practices of Nawaz regime and educating people of Pakhtunistan through his newspaper, in this case he was a true journalist. Bourgious, Imperialists and their puppets are enemies of Pakhtun nation, today Pakhtun nation is victim and target of those elements who don't want to see Pakhtuns educated and advanced. Lame-Duck President Musharraf's drastic steps to silence news coverage make a mockery of his often repeated claims to have fostered free and open media. ''Reporters Without Borders'' believes Afridi was imprisoned, convicted and sentenced to death in June 2001 because of his journalistic activities as the head of the Peshawar-based Frontier Post, and not because of any involvement in drug trafficking. His newspaper had carried frequent reports of corruption within Pakistan's Anti-Narcotics Force, which was set up with US support. Journalists in Pakistan and throughout Central and South Asia face great risks. Journalism is the noblest profession around. I hope new government in Pakhtunistan take action for release of The Frontier Post chief and all other journalists.
Saved from: http://www.thefrontierpost.com/News.aspx?ncat=le&nid=378&ad=06-04-200
Dated: Sunday, April 6, 2008, Rabi ul Awwal 28, 1429 A.H.
SALUTE TO Z A BHUTTO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Frontier Post
4.04.2008
Salute to Z A Bhutto!
M Waqar
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was executed on April 4, 1979, a darkest day in the history of Pakistan. Bhutto wrote a book from his death cell, Titled "If I am assassinated," its last pages contained a quote from Russian author Nikolai Dostoevsky: "Man's dearest possession is his life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as not to be scared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past, so as not to be tortured for years without purpose, that dying he can say, 'All my life and my strength were given to the first cause in the world - the liberation of mankind.' " As death stared the Z.A Bhutto in the face, he stared back. His past has no shame of cowardice. His daughter, too, gave her life in courage. "If India builds the bomb we will eat grass or leaves, we will go hungry. But we will get one of our own." This statement by Zulfiar Ali Bhutto should open up our eyes and bring back the passion of patriotism, unity and love for each others for the sake of Pakistan. I would like to express that this man is and was hero of Pakistan. Historians, Retired Judges of the Superior Courts and eminent lawyers have now unanimously admitted that Mr. Z.A Bhutto was hanged by a military dictator General Zia-Ul Haq by orchestrating a judicial trial to get rid of a popular leader. He gave Pakistan its first constitution, nuclear programme, held peace talks with India and brought 90,000 POW who were in Indian prison and were going to face war crimes. He liberated the small farmers and peasants from the repression and cruelty of big landlords and banished the jagirdari and sardari system declaring that all citizens are born equal and must live with equal rights. Z.A Bhutto was a Legend, who lived and died like a hero with courage, determination and devotion to his principles, when cruel dictator Zia was going to kill him, Z.A Bhutto could sign few papers and could live in exile but he was a real man, he was not a coward. He too could have made a deal and lived to fight another day; but only great men with principles sacrifice their life for their cause. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto earned everlasting fame in the pantheon of leaders from the Third World in the struggle against colonialism and imperialism. He had the privilege of interacting with many of those leaders who played a great role in the epic struggle for national independence in the 20th Century including Mao Tse Tung, Soekarno, Chou-en Lai, and Gamal Abdel Nasser. He belonged to a category of anti-imperialist leaders who included Jamal Nasir of Egypt and Jawahir Lal Nehru of India. He was a brilliant Diplomat who negotiated some of Pakistan's most enduring diplomatic policies as well as bargaining from a position of weakness against Indira Gandhi in Simla. He was a great diplomat; there is a story that the American President John F. Kennedy was much impressed with then Foreign Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. When they met, Kennedy walked with him in the Rose Garden and said, "Bhutto, if you were an American, you would be in my Cabinet". To which Zulfikar Ali Bhutto smilingly replied, "No, Mr. President. If I were an American, you would be in my cabinet". A Pan Islamic socialist who weakened the Feudal and tribal system.. He also pushed through Pakistan's nuclear programme despite enormous International pressure. He was also a brilliant politician whose popularity and powerful speeches impressed even his worst opponents. It took a great man to get Pakistan out of the 71 trauma. A dynamic leader, who stood up against imperialism and looked to China and other progressive countries for an alliance. When he was Prime Minister, the country prospered and was set on a course of industrial and agricultural development. He gained popularity in villages and poor industrial areas. Bhutto was the only true leader in our history who gave us constitution, identity in international relations. You will be surprised to know when Bhutto became as Foreign Minister, at that time; we did not have ambassador level relations with so many big countries of the world like Indonesia etc. He empowers the poor of his country. Such people like Z.A BHUTTO are born rarely, who will forget his capabilities as an extempore speaker, as an writer, as an diplomat, as an leader and above all as lover of poor. On the day of his martyrdom his opponents called him as a culprit but same are now calling him as an innocent. The simple reason for this is that Zia tried his best to create divisions among people in order to finish the popularity of Bhutto. The irony is all those who hatched conspiracy against him are no more in this mortal world, all of them died a horrible death. Bhutto was the greatest leader we can think in the modern history. In his book "If I Am Assassinated", Bhutto clearly mentions his fear of 120 million Pakistanis under a defenseless sky in comparison to a nuclear India. What a vision! India could have swallowed Pakistan long ago if thanks to Bhutto we were not an atomic power. On the economic front Bhutto vision for nationalization was that Pakistanis will work hard like Chinese, but here Pakistanis failed him. The labor and the management of nationalized industry had no interest to take advantage of this opportunity. Using this as a golden opportunity, the industrialists, bureaucrats, and above all corrupt army declared him as an unsuccessful leader. Bhutto loved poor and poor loved Bhutto. This relationship is ever lasting. The first leader who legislated labor laws and enforced in Pakistan and nobody could do it till now. This is the reason of his popularity among labors. He tried to unite the Islamic world. The Pakistan is still under developing country because Bhutto is not alive. Z.A Bhutto is the first person in Pakistan who has given the voice to the common people. Z.A Bhutto was great charismatic leader, man of masses, top class negotiator, excellent communicator, a visionary, known for mercurial brilliance, wit and a highly well read person. He attracted mammoth crowds where ever he addressed public meetings even in remote regions of the country. He was a man of masses because of his personal charm and charisma and the one who spoke in the language of workers, laborers, peasants and the people in the streets. He would make the people feel that he was one of them, understood them, had solutions to their problems and give them roti, kapra aur makan. He might have given all these things to them if his government had not become target of the establishment's conspiracies. ZA Bhutto's Powerful Political Legacy Cannot be eliminated. In no time Bhutto had made a tremendous impact all around. As Minister for Fuel and Power, he had diverse explorers tapping into Pakistan's underground hidden energy resources. For the first time Russians were involved in oil and gas exploration. His time as Minister for Science and Technology was well spent. He could measure the advancements made by India in the atomic field. I can't help grieving the tragic death of a Hero who paid with his life to set an ultimate example of principled politics. I hope we honor Shaheed Bhutto by giving to the weak and less fortunate people of Pakistan the gift of unconditional empowerment through democracy and moral governance and not trade his dream for our illusions. Bourgeois battled Bhutto's populist economic and political enforcement, the bourgeois and the petty-bourgeois became ready instruments in carrying out their social propaganda against Bhutto. He was the man behind introducing democracy in the country by kicking out the dictatorial rule and finally gave a consensus constitution of 1973 with guarantees to basic human rights under the supremacy of parliament. Cruel dictators like Zia and Musharraf are responsible for bringing fundamentalists into the corridor of power, Mush, who is now trumping against them just an eye wash. Political Leaders must posses' qualities of power, vision, ethics, courage, knowledge, decision making, integrity, enthusiasms and devotion and should have principles, Z.A BHUTTO had all those qualities. Mr. Bhutto lived consciously to make history and to leave a legacy in the form of the development of his nation. He is right credited with saving Pakistan at the darkest moment of its history, as French President Giscardd' Estaing said he was the man,'' who incarnated Pakistan at a dramatic hour of its history''. Z A BHUTTO was indeed a great leader, a leader we must salute today; who gave voice to the voiceless and helped them shape their own destiny. It was under his leadership that every Pakistani given the right to passport. Education was nationalized and made available to every child. Scores of Universities were built to turn the children of the discriminated and downtrodden into lawyers, doctors and engineers liberating them from a destiny of backwardness. Bhutto pushed politics out of the posh drawing rooms into real Pakistan-into the muddy lanes and villages of the poor. The ever-lasting contribution of Bhutto was to raise the consciousness of the people for democracy. He awakened the masses, making them realize they were the legitimate fountainhead of political power. He enlightened the peasants, the industrial workers, the students, the women and the rest of the common people of their importance and of their right of franchise, which is the definite means of bringing changes and improvement in the lives of the common people. He deeply cherished democracy and democratic values and in the end gave his life for the cause of freedom. In the case of Pakistan, he viewed military rule as a negation of the very genesis of the country that came into being as a result of a democratic process and a vote. Today as the Nation pays tribute to one of its greatest sons; it is destined to move forward in the spirit of Federalism, Democracy, Autonomy and Egalitarianism which he lit through his example of courage in the defense of principles and ideals. Z.A BHUTTO was a people leader, a legend and a poet and he remained so till the last breath in his body. He was a true revolutionary; his revolution was against imperialism, against bourgeois. He was a charismatic leader and his charisma still rules the nation. Z.A Bhutto ruled the hearts of people when he was alive and till date he rules their hearts. Z.A Bhutto was a principled friend to the poor, downtrodden and oppressed. He was fearless in his beliefs and refused to bow before any man or power other than the Almighty. His contributions to an impregnable Pakistan are seen in the Kamra Aeronautical factory, Heavy Mechanical Complex at Taxila, modernization of Karachi Shipyard, creation of precision engineering works, Pakistan Steel Mills, Port Qasim, Pakistan Automobile Corporation to name a few. By signing the Simla Accord of 1972 he negotiated longest peace between India and Pakistan. His social reforms laid the foundation of an egalitarian society, his non-aligned foreign policy earned Pakistan respect in the comity of nations. He lifted the nation drowning in a sea of despair to Himalayan heights. The death cell in which his killers kept him failed to break his will or his determination to challenge military rule and stand up as the leader of the people. Bhutto was a modernizer and saw nationalism as the key to unity. He rejected fanaticism. He gave pride to the poor. As leader of the Third World he spoke boldly against racism, colonialism and imperialism. He fearlessly defended the right of nations to independence. When the 1973 Ramadan War broke out, he sent Pakistan's military to defend the borders of the Muslim countries including the Golan Heights of Syria. Bhutto's short life of fifty years was spent in the service of many international, regional and national causes. Today Pakistan is at the crossroads. Its policies relating to Nuclear, Taliban, India, Militancy, Religious Parties, Democracy and Economy are in shambles. Shaheed Bhutto believed that the army could protect its institutional competence by keeping out of politics. He said, "Those soldiers who leave the barracks to move into Government mansions lose wars and become prisoners of war as happened in 1971; his words reverberate as a warning and a guide to the country to save its honor, respect, pride and position by reverting to the golden principles that gave it birth. April 4 falls at a time when Pakistan is faced with a critical situation. The dark shadow of military dictatorship clouds the political horizon and spawns fissiparous tendencies striking at the solidarity of the country. Rocket launchers and bomb blasts kill innocents while the military is involved in operations against its own people. The rise of the suicide bomber and armed struggle is reminiscent of an earlier military dictatorship. The tyranny of General Zia's military rule led to the Kalashnikov culture where young men picked up automatic weapons. That culture has reasserted itself under the military dictatorship of General Musharraf. Except that the weapons are more dangerous than the Kalashnikovs of yesterday. Every time a General ruled Pakistan, innocent people were being killed. Today many people in Pakistan must be scared as Mr. Zardari is shaking hands with MQM, let's not forget that Mr. Bhutto and Benazir were killed by two presidents,who supported MQM.As Asfand Wali Khan has some reservations about MQM,I agree with him. Z.A Bhutto was born in 1928. He was martyred in 1979. Yet he lives in the hearts and minds of the people still shining like a star that brightens the sky motivating those caught in the prisons of oppression. No doubt, the age of Bhutto was an age of revolution. At the time of his over throw; Bhutto was emerging as a spokesman of the world of Islam and the leader of the third world. Although his life and political career were cruelly terminated, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto will always be remembered as one of the great leaders who took part in the liberation of the third world from the yoke of Imperialism and Neo Colonialism during the twentieth century. "It is better to live like a lion for one day than to live like a jackal for a thousand." Z.A.BHUTTO''.
Long Live Bhuttoism!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Saved from: http://www.thefrontierpost.com/News.aspx?ncat=ar&nid=196&ad=04-04-200
Dated: Friday, April 4, 2008, Rabi ul Awwal 26, 1429 A.H.
Putting blame on Pakistan won't? help the war on terror.
Blame Pakistan first for all evil on this planet. Increase the number of troops. More bombs, better arms, more control of borders. Profile all Muslims. More of the same has not worked. It has only exacerbated the security situation in Western Asia. Can someone turn the light on?
There is a dearth of clear vision and thinking in the $80 Billion think tank industry that seems to copy and paste the Neocon agenda and pawn it off as policy.
Bombs and more troops is not the answer.
What is needed is a new Marshall Plan for Pakistan, creation of massive economic opportunities and elimination of subsidies to cotton farmers in the US. The elimination of the cotton subsidy would allow Pakistani farmers to export about $12 Billion of cotton and cotton products. This would also provide additional employment to the youth who may have too much time on their hands.
America should build more roads, more schools and more hospitals in the NWFP, FATA, Wazirisitan and Pakistan. 100 new hospitals in the NWFP would evaporate any anti-Americanism. 100 new roads would eviscerate bigotry and illiteracy. 1000 new schools would eliminate any anti-Western animosity. Better seeds and increasing per hecter yields would put more money in the pockets of the farmers, who could then send their children to better schools. Pakistan need 50 new American Universities and 1000 internet ready libraries. She needs 50 million internet capable $100 laptops. An investment in Pakistan would reduce and eliminate the expenditure on GWOT (Global War on Terror).
Finally a word of sanity in the Canadian press.
Putting blame on Pakistan won’t help war on terror, March 05, 2008, Tariq Amin-Khan
The Harper government, with the support of the Liberals, appears set to extend Canadian troop deployment in Afghanistan beyond 2009. The question is: What are Canadian troops doing in Afghanistan, and by extending the mission will Canada be able to assist the U.S. and NATO in their objective to win the war on terror and eliminate Al Qaeda, the Taliban and the militant Islamists? A tall order to be sure, but is it achievable? The short answer to the question is no.
If the mission objectives are unattainable, then why are Canadian troops in Afghanistan? The situation gets murkier as we examine the rhetoric of security analysts who pin the blame squarely on Pakistan. They claim that the issue is not the insurgency in Afghanistan; the problem really is with Pakistan.
But it appears that the problem is neither in Afghanistan nor in Pakistan. Rather, there is a direct relationship between foreign military presence in Afghanistan and the rise of militant Islam. Furthermore, the absence of a democratic alternative gives militant Islam a free hand to operate in both of these states.
The foreign militaries occupying Afghanistan take the view that militants are on the run as NATO intensifies its military campaigns against them. The reality is otherwise.
Even a cursory look at the developments in Afghanistan, Iraq and even Pakistan (until recently) shows that militant Islamists have gained in strength, and have become bolder since the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. The Taliban in Afghanistan have not been contained but have actually become stronger.
Militant Islam is a political movement and its aim is to capture state power. The U.S. played a significant role in the 1970s and 1980s to empower Islamists. The Taliban in Afghanistan took advantage of this nurturing environment to hone their political and military skills. They have had a taste of holding onto state power and are eager to return.
It is now becoming clearer that militant Islam cannot be defeated militarily. Every time overwhelming force has been used, NATO, Afghan, Iraqi and Pakistani casualties have increased and Taliban, Iraqi and Pakistani militant Islamists have withdrawn and regrouped to relaunch their attacks another day. This has been the pattern.
All this raises the possibility that the war on terror is not a war to be won at all.
By all accounts, the Bush administration has crafted this war as the new permanent war, a “long war,” along the lines of forcing a stalemate as in the Cold War. This permanent war fuels not only the military-industrial complex, but now also the security-industrial complex all combined with the synergy that exists between Big Oil, the military and Western economies.
This idea of forcing a stalemate is also echoed by professor Janice Gross Stein in the recent book The Unexpected War: Canada in Kandahar. Her view, expressed in terms of Canada’s military strategy in Afghanistan, is that based on the U.S. Cold War policy of containment, the aim at best would be to attain a stalemate in the war on terror.
It is not possible here to discuss in any detail the fallacy of applying the logic of the Cold War in relation to militant Islam and the war on terror. But it can be said that this strategy of forcing a stalemate is ill-conceived against adversaries that are mobile and geographically untethered. These adversaries, in the heat of battle, can simply melt into the populace as NATO commanders are left to mull over their battle plans.
Blaming Pakistan for the war on terror going badly for NATO, therefore, does not help; it merely compounds the problem. The sobering fact is that Pakistan has very little to do with the war on terror being won or lost. But alienating Pakistan is an option that NATO takes at its own peril.
As to the support that militants in northwest Pakistan have provided the Taliban on the Afghan side, there is a need to understand the ground realities of the area. Southern Afghanistan and northwest Pakistan is a contiguous area inhabited by the same ethnic group, the Pashtuns, who have had historical kinship ties. The border, the Durand Line, is an arbitrary divide between Pakistan and Afghanistan established by British colonial rulers, and it has never been possible to effectively police it.
Consequently, the border has always been porous and an attack by an occupying force against Pashtuns on one side is seen as an attack against the other side as well. However, when you overlay religious ideology onto this ethnic solidarity, it becomes a potent combination that produces a resilient guerrilla force. A force that is able to take on the most sophisticated militaries within an inhospitable terrain against which standing armies and modern weaponry have not been very effective.
This reality of guerrilla warfare worked wonders for the U.S. when its Islamist proxies in Pakistan and Afghanistan were waging the jihad against “godless communism.” Ironically, now that the shoe is on the other foot, Pakistan is being blamed for the war on terror going badly for Canada, the U.S. and NATO.
The only way militant Islam can be contained, nay challenged, is for a democratic alternative to take root in Pakistan and Afghanistan. However, it would be naive to assume that even if this shift comes about, the transition will be simple and painless because the democratic alternative will be resisted. But democracy will eventually deal with the militants.
In this context, the outcome of the Feb. 18 elections in Pakistan gives pause for hope. The outcome reinforces the position that the political and democratic alternative is the best antidote to check the rise of militant Islam. Just look at the rout the Islamist parties have suffered in these elections in the Northwest Frontier Province. A province where the Islamists had formed the government after the 2002 elections, and where people resoundingly said no to intimidation and suicide bombings.
This is the message that Stephen Harper also needs to hear. Even with additional troops, Canada will end up fighting for more stalemates. But what will this no-win situation mean in human terms - in lives lost for an objective that is neither clear nor within the mission’s grasp.
Tariq Amin-Khan is an assistant professor in the department of politics and public administration at Ryerson University.
Democracy is an attitude
Is China able to pursue democracy? Can the Communist Party of China (CPC) broaden democracy under the system of multiparty cooperation and political consultation under the leadership of the CPC? Is democracy something solely defined by the West?
No political institution around the world could label itself perfect. Although the least defective mechanism in human history, democracy in every country is in process. Therefore, democracy is rather an attitude and something out of self perception.
Unlike the world's most modern democracies, the Chinese people were suppressed several times by outsiders with surpassingly sophisticated gunboats and cannons. The inward-inclined Chinese at that time, long feeling insecure and victimized, were understandably wary of any dose that Western countries attempted to feed us. Good idea and sincere behavior from outside may not always be seen as they are.
While one nation is evidently left over by the rest of its peers, the people would not easily take what others uphold, particularly when pushing democracy is used as a tool of penetration.
The economic miracle in the consecutive three decades empowers China to pursue political freedom with much more resources at hand. Aspiration for democracy is not what we use for make-up. Every country would have its uniqueness to develop democracy based on its own history, culture and conditions. The unique process of democratic advancement in various countries could hardly be oversimplified to a few modes. Even Western democracies have experienced agonizing unique processes.
Hu Jintao said at the 17th CPC National Congress to "deepen political restructuring," betraying the urgency sensed by the CPC that ossified political arrangements often impede further economic ambitions. Anyhow, few countries in the developed world had so many challenges as China does, a vast land, the world's biggest population with a substantive chunk of poor people and yet to be reached national unity, just name a few. China has a much shorter history of the modern republic and crammed into only three decades the industrial revolution on which both the United States and the United Kingdom spent over a century.
Considering the uniqueness of each democracy and the time-consuming process of breeding democracy, it's unwise to copy existing foreign democracies. Democratizing China in Western style is not a cure-all for problems in China. After China successfully integrated market economy into the socialist pattern, which in orthodox definition requires common ownership of the means of production, why don't we believe China could also create a new way leading to a successful socialist democracy?
Democracy should not be a political slogan for toppling something, and it is mundane and what people feel in their day-to-day life. Although still in rapid transformation, market economy is fervently embraced by the Chinese, most of whom now enjoy unprecedentedly decent livelihood. The government conceded from most aspects of people's life. People are free to travel and study abroad, purchase cars, own real estates, trade publicly-listed stocks, choose their jobs and lifestyle, and grumble on blogs, which was so incredible in a country where only a decade ago citizens were required to report their marriages, divorces and family plans to the government.
Consciously transforming its role from a strictly-knitted revolutionary organization to a competent ruling party, the CPC is now blazing trails in testing what the most effective method is in democratizing Chinese politics. The CPC proclaims it represents not only the working class but also all the outstanding forces, a significant drive to diversify itself to a cover-all plural one. Hu said to widen intra-Party democracy, which the CPC believes is a guarantee for a better application of democracy in the country. Increasingly enlarging loss margins have been introduced in various CPC elections, including the ongoing voting for the all-powerful CPC central committee this weekend. Multiple candidates and contested campaigns in direct elections are also being institutionalized at grassroots levels. All constituencies are now much better represented.
China was lagged far behind by leading economies in the contemporary time. The Chinese have to resort to a path which is different from conventional development. Among the defects Western democracies also have, the foresighted democratic principles designed by founding fathers could still not effectively prevent tiny but extremely powerful interests groups from trampling on the majority. While having a long way to go, the CPC is now trying to improve the democratic centralism, which has been proved, partly by the economic miracle gained by the nation, quite effective to enrich Chinese and keep the country on a stable track.
Modern Chinese are aspiring to achieve the biggest economic and social goals at the lowest cost. The Chinese-style democracy we are now promoting will have high chances to give an answer.
Editor: Song Shutao
GREEKS IN PAKHTUNKHWA
Daily Times - Site Edition
Friday, March 07, 2008
Footloose: Greeks in Pukhtunkhwa? —Salman Rashid
Watching from the rooftop that April afternoon many years ago, I could see a clear Greek connection here; a worship of Dionysus. A reading of the DNA test report mentioned last week in this space shows that to be true. While the Kalasha have no Greek strain, many tested Pukhtuns doThe DNA tests I mentioned in my column last week that showed there was no Greek strain in the Kalasha people of Chitral brought up an interesting proposition from correspondent Lubi Uzunovski. She writes that the test does indeed show a total lack of Greek genetic traces among the Kalasha. But has anyone tested them for a possible genetic link with the Macedonians?She goes on that a bulk of modern Greek population is as recent to the region as about one hundred and fifty years and that they were Christian migrants from Asia MinorWhat does one make of this then? Who then were the people who lived in, say, Sparta or Athens over two thousand years ago when the Macedonian prince set out for India? I find Uzunovski’s idea about all modern Greeks being outsiders absurd for that hints at an unpopulated Greece in the classical age. Her suggestion regarding re-testing to establish a Macedonian connection certainly makes sense, however.That having been said, I nevertheless still maintain that history shows us, not even in the vaguest terms, that Alexander never led his army across the great snow-draped ridges of the Hindu Kush Mountains in mid-winter. On the contrary, his itinerary across modern NWFP and the rest of Pakistan is now virtually with any doubt and in it Chitral features nowhere. Historians bent upon ‘proving’ that Alexander was in Chitral hang on to one place name — just one. And that is Nysa which fits nicely with the village of Nisa on the road from Chitral to Mastuj and nearer to the latter.From my memories of 1986, Nisa is a delightfully sylvan spot where huge and luscious peaches, succulent apricots and riotously sweet mulberries and plums abound. And Nisa is where the average landlord will accost you, firmly grasp you by the arm and lead you home to feed you a lavish meal followed by platters of fruit picked straight off his trees. But then, if truth be told, that is what the whole lot of Chitralis are — and not just the well off ones like my good friend Siraj ul Mulk and his charming wife Ghazala. Even the poorest Chitrali will never let a traveller by without feeding him.But I digress; so back to the main story. It is delightful Nisa that tells the charlatan that Alexander was in Chitral because in the context of his Swat campaign, Alexander’s histories do mention a place called Nysa. If anything, that is the flimsiest of grounds to base a whole theory on. A careful reading of the histories show that this Nysa would have been somewhere in the modern district of Dir. But the reference is always vague and one can scarcely assign it a proper location in modern geographical context.So I return to my primary premise that the Greeks (or the Macedonians) did not cross the high ridges into Chitral. We know that a hundred and fifty years after Alexander, another branch of the Greeks who were the progeny of Seleucus Nicator, one of Alexander’s generals who inherited Syria and Persian after the passing of the conqueror, invaded Bactria (Balkh), Kabul and eventually overran Taxila. Indeed, their kingdom spread across all of modern Pakistan. Like Alexander, they too were not proper Greeks, but Macedonian. Scattered liberally across this great and wonderful land, they have left behind more than ample archaeological evidence of their long years here. In Chitral we have so far found no evidence of these latter Indo-Greeks.Back in 1999, I was in Bannu with my head full of descriptions of this wonderful, now sadly Talibanised, city left by Chinese pilgrims of the early Middle Ages. My guide, a local government official, initially failed to understand what it was I wanted to see. After several hours of bumbling about and one heated outburst between us, he drove me ten kilometres southwest of town to the village of Bhurt. There above the houses and amidst neatly parcelled farmland loomed a large clayey mound called Akra. I was eventually to learn that this was the remnant of a huge city that thrived from the 3rd century BCE (Indo-Greeks) through the Kushans, Parthians, Ghaznavides and into the time of Iyultimish. That is, this was a living city for a millennium and a half.Later that same evening I saw a spectacle in Bannu city. About sundown, Chowk Bazaar in the city started to fill up with lean-bodied young Pukhtun lads. Soon it was a milling, pressing multitude so my guide and I climbed the roof of a roadside build to witness the proceedings. Here were dancing processions complete with drummers and pipers each led by a beaming, glowing young man bedecked with garlands of marigold and rose with his friends on either side of and behind him. Pukhtuns being what they are, they sported their garlands over one shoulder and below the other crossing their chests with them, just as they would wear their bullet-studded bandoliers.The entire bazaar was virtually choked with such processions and the din of music and the roar of young, jubilant singing and talking was ear-splitting. Though there must have been nearly twenty such processions in that tight little bazaar, there was no harsh word, no scuffling. There was very palpable air of goodwill and merriment. If it got too crowded, arriving processions patiently waited their turn for room to be made before they entered with their own music and dance. And going around all this were copious (that is an understatement!) amounts of confectionary. Among much laughter and joshing, virtually tons of gulab jamun and barfi were forced by friends down each other’s gullets.The heavily flower-bedecked leader of each procession was the soon-to-be groom. For long years it had been tradition that the young groom would celebrate his impending wedding by leading his friends in a musical procession to let the world know that the big day had come for him. As I watched from the rooftop the orgies of gaiety, song, dance and eating, I suddenly saw in them undertones of a Dionysian revel from the distant past when Bannu occupied the now ruined and deserted mound of Akra by the village of Bhurt.When the Greeks were here, they would have indulged in similar revels to please their god Dionysus. Then there would have been bulging wine-skins, not mere cardboard boxes of confectionary. There would have been women also and all and sundry well and properly inebriated. But they all, every single one of them, would have been decked with garlands just as these jubilant Pukhtun lads were in the spring of 1999. Over the years the wine-skins may have given way to pitchers of bhung or perhaps vast quantities of hashish. But with the coming of the hypocritical dictatorship of the late 1970s, the Pukhtuns settled for confectionary — though it is another thing what they would consume in private.Watching from the rooftop that April afternoon many years ago, I could see a clear Greek connection here; a worship of Dionysus. A reading of the DNA test report mentioned last week in this space shows that to be true. While the Kalasha have no Greek strain, many tested Pukhtuns do.Salman Rashid is a travel writer and knows Pakistan like the back of his hand.
The Frontier Post
Marriage of convenience!!!
M Waqar USA
By observing on going political developments and melo-drama between Nawaz Sharif and Zardari, I hate to say that I don't trust Nawaz, he is the one who did not let BENAZIR BHUTTO to run her government properly, when she was prime minister, Mr. Nawaz is asking for restoration of judges but I am sure that nation has not forgotten that during his rule supreme court was attacked. In politics, yesterday enemies can be today's friends but it seems like Mr. Sharif is already creating problems, differences may split but its too scary and it will be another golden opportunity for any army general in Pakistan to overthrow the govt. Although I am sure he has learned the lessons in exile, After his return from exile, he has displayed restraint, tolerance and maturity in his speeches and actions and it was a great gesture that he went to the hospital when Benazir Bhutto was killed, progressive, liberal and democratic Pakistanis must be happy to see that cronies of Musharraf and religious mullah's parties defeated and they have great expectations from winners of 2008 election but I hope that these politicians don't indulge in dirty politics and dig their n graves. Nawaz Sharif is an autocrat with no relation to democratic norms and traditions. His each tenure in the helm of affairs was more dishonest than the previous one. His malpractices not only swayed away the economic structure of the state but also made the lives of poor disastrous. I am not saying that Mr. Zardari is an Angel but I think if Nawaz Sharif is sincere this time then he should fully cooperate with other politicians and let the new govt finish its job for five years and let the people of Pakistan to decide after five years. Nawaz Sharif is asking a lot from the new winners and his list of demands is growing every time I read a Pakistani newspaper on line. Mr. Zardari or his Prime Minister will have their reservations about some issues and if they fail to satisfy Mr.Sharif. I think there will be another political chaos in Pakistan. As Aitzaz Ahsan has termed the political consensus developed between Asif Ali Zardari and Mian Nawaz Sharif a good omen and has cautioned if both the leaders back out from this consensus people and lawyers will come out on the roads against them and that's what I am afraid of, because Nawaz Sharif will jeopardize this political process. Democracy kicking in now and Pakistanis sees a chance of peace and normal life, people don't want show downs now, Zardari may be a man of compromise and hope Nawaz can be like him too, politics of revenge will derail what the nation achieved through elections, Nawaz Sharif have to compromise, accommodate and not to confront and let the nation's parliament to decide and that will be consensus. We know that Zardari will run the show, Mr Musharraf will expect a Yes Man but that will be a real test and PPP, PML-N, ANP needs to stay strong and together and not let differences of political opinion mess up this new political process, and this all depends on Nawaz to cooperate, but will he??? Although, whenever a GENERAL rules Pakistan, he makes sure to destroy all the institutions of civilians and bring country to total chaos and collapse, therefore the idea of a national government should not be only about sharing power but also sharing responsibility, during past and present military regimes, people of pukhtoonistan and Balochistan suffered heavily, it should be responsibility of new govt to restore confidence among people of these two provinces, provincial autonomy is important issue according to the constitution and it is time to honor this compact, will Nawaz will agree to these issues??? If President Musharraf has any self respect, he must resign now; he can go to TURKEY and should study how ATTA-TURK changed Turkey. Anyhow, I was writing about Nawaz Sharif, I am not going to open can of worms but would love to see what other readers on this forum think???
Saved from: http://www.thefrontierpost.com/News.aspx?ncat=le&nid=345&ad=06-03-200
Dated: Thursday, March 06, 2008, Safar 27, 1429 A.H.
