Robert Scheer: Our Man in Pakistan

[marmar]

from Truthdig, via The Nation:



truthdig | posted November 7, 2007 (web only)
Our Man in Pakistan
Robert Scheer




Robert Scheer is editor of TruthDig, where this essay originally was published.

So, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, treated ever so respectfully by George Bush throughout his Administration, in which he became the first Pakistani leader to visit Camp David, has turned out to be just another crummy dictator. But he was our dictator, kind of a modern, even westernized one who could stand up to all those bearded Islamic terrorists.

Well, not exactly. Not that anyone bothered to remember, but Musharraf seized power in Pakistan, ending democratic rule, two years before the 9/11 attacks and did nothing to end his nation's support of the Taliban rulers next door, who were harboring Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda. Before that he was part of a military elite that had, as the 9/11 Commission report would later conclude, been one of the main sponsors of the Taliban. Nor did Musharraf as dictator-president do anything to undermine the nut cases that he continued to diplomatically recognize as the legitimate rulers of the neighboring country. "On terrorism, Pakistan helped nurture the Taliban," the 9/11 Commission reported, adding: "Many in the government have sympathized with or provided support to the extremists. Musharraf agreed that Bin Laden was bad. But before 9/11, preserving good relations with the Taliban took precedence."

True, after 9/11 Musharraf did provide minimal support for the US invasion of Afghanistan in return for considerable aid and the lifting of the sanctions that had been imposed on his nation for developing nuclear weapons. Odd that a nation that had nuclear weapons and that had actively supported the terrorist haven in Afghanistan was welcomed back into America's good graces only three weeks after 9/11--at the very same time that the Bush Administration was drawing up plans to overthrow Saddam Hussein, who was bin Laden's sworn enemy.

Oh, yes, sorry, Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. I forgot, there was that guy "Curveball," the guy in Germany who told us that Saddam had those mobile biological weapons labs that Colin Powell relied on so heavily in his UN address. But, as CBS's 60 Minutes reported Sunday, the German government had told the Bush Administration very clearly that its great weapons expert was a just another immigrant trying to hustle a green card. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071119/truthdig

[Igel]

1. I was just reading something today that claimed Westerners

didn't understand Pakistan.

Some do, no doubt.

But yesterday there was a bloviation saying that if we wanted to solve the problem with the Islamists in Waziristan and deal a death blow to the Pakistani Taliban, "we" should simply "solve" the Israel/Palestine problem. That would solve the problem because, well, the Middle East is tormented by the issue.

Somehow, that Pakistan isn't in the Middle East wasn't obvious to the commentator. That part of the Pakistan policy was based on its animosity with India, and that militarism in the area is more Kashmir-centered than I/P centered was completely overlooked. That the Deobandis got help from the Wahhabis is indisputable, but since it's more or less a home-grown Islamism based on British imperialism in India, and the Muslim response to the British and the Hindus, well, the US and the Zionists seem quaintly irrelevant. Even now there's an undercurrent that the problems in Afghanistan are caused by India, that the Karzai government is pro-Indian, and that this cannot be accepted. Then there are the class issues, where the Deobandis--as they started out in the mid-1800s--do a Hamas-like strategy, so class and conservative religion are very much intermixed, and get support from dacoits and timber barons and drug lords. It's a nice toxic mix, especially when education of lower, conservative and traditional classes imparts job skills and education and increased expectations, but doesn't much alter their conservative and traditional views. Nor does it do much to alter tribal and ethnic loyalties, at least in some parts of the country. Add in that the efficient economic sector--and "efficient" is very much a relative term here--is the Army, so that the Army has outsized importance (properly so, IMHO, given the country's history, but it's no longer needed as much in this role so so it's time for it to downsize). But it means that the pigeonholes we have don't quite work, and few Western commentators are willing to re-evaluate whether the emus actually fit into their other-assigned pigeonholes.